<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Aegis by themantlingdark</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24193696">Aegis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark'>themantlingdark</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Sibling Incest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:01:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24193696</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For ravenbringslight, who wanted Loki taking care of Thor after Thor loses an eye.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki/Thor (Marvel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>223</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Aegis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/gifts">ravenbringslight</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Thor came back from the gas station with a six-pack of cider and four bundles of firewood. </p><p>An unfamiliar car sat in his parents’ driveway. Out-of-state plates, but that was nothing odd--with the holiday, half the cars in town had come from across the country. </p><p> </p><p>Inside, Thor stood in the foyer with a bundle of wood in his right hand and a grocery sack looped around his left wrist. Dean Martin was singing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” below the conversation in the living room. A stick-thin woman was on the settee facing the fireplace. Odin and Frigga were on the sofa to her left. Loki was in the chair in front of the window to her right. </p><p>Frigga was saying something. Making an introduction. Thor heard it as if through deep water. </p><p>“This is Katie Byrne. She said your advice saved her husband’s life.”</p><p>In his all his time as a registered dietitian, Thor had never once had thanks outside his office, let alone outside his zip code. His recommendations were always the first to be ignored. </p><p>This wife was not not wearing a wedding ring. She was wearing a watch. Thor couldn’t see its face from the door, but some sleepy part of his brain rolled over and reminded him that the dial on this model was blue, and the name below the triangle and crown that sat at twelve o’clock was Rolex. A piece from the nineties. Stainless steel with a black PVD coating. The Oyster Perpetual Date Submariner. Mens, with a few links removed for a slim wrist. This was only the third person he had ever seen wearing one, and the first two people had been wearing the same watch: a sweet sixteen present from a father’s collection to his daughter. To see this model on a stranger felt too unlikely. </p><p>He looked up at the woman’s ears. Large, especially at the lobule. Their overall outline was slightly wobbly. Lumpy. Thor would go as far as ugly. </p><p>And it was familiar. </p><p>Her skin was at least three shades darker with spray tan. Her hair was dyed a meek, mousy brown now instead of the bottle-black-over-honey-blond Thor had known in youth. Dark contacts hid blue irises when she turned to look at him. Bangs curtained her high forehead and collagen plumped her lips. She’d had a nose job that functioned much as Jennifer Grey’s had done: rendering her unrecognizable. Almost. Her cheeks were the same, and unmistakable. And those ears.</p><p>“Hela-”</p><p>She laughed out a curse and darted her hand into the leather tote that sat at her feet. </p><p>The shot made Frigga scream. It startled Odin to his feet. Loki sat frozen, staring, with his mouth slightly open.</p><p>The nose of the gun had been less than six feet from Thor’s breast. Loki had heard the air leave his brother’s lungs beneath the bang from the gun, but Thor was still on his feet, lunging forward and swinging the bundle of wood like an oversize fist, sailing it into Hela’s left shoulder, knocking her over the back of the chair and onto the floor, sending the pistol clattering away under a cupboard. </p><p>Hela scrambled up and bolted back to the kitchen with Thor sprinting after.</p><p>Loki heard a soft curse followed by low metallic ringing, like a gong. Dean Martin was still singing.</p><p> </p><p>When Loki made it to the kitchen, Thor was bent over their sister’s body. A cast iron skillet that had, quite recently, contained cornbread was on the floor beside her. The bread itself was everywhere.</p><p>“Is she dead?”</p><p>“No,” Thor said, his voice a tired grumble, “just out cold. Can you call 911?”</p><p>Thor bound Hela's hands with twine that was meant to truss the turkey. </p><p> </p><p>Loki was on his third attempt at dialing the police with vibrating fingers when Frigga said, “I’ve got it,” from the doorway. </p><p>Thor stood and turned just as she was confirming their address with the dispatcher. </p><p>“Mom,” Loki gasped.</p><p>“I see it,” she said. </p><p>“Thor, sit down,” Loki urged, dragging a chair out from under the breakfast table. “And don’t move.” </p><p>The wooden handle of a kitchen knife protruded from Thor’s right eye. Below, a trickle of blood stuttered down his cheek and was lost in his beard. Loki expected gouts of it. The horror of the wound warranted it. But the thin line was already beginning to darken and clot.</p><p>The sack of cider still hung from Thor's left wrist. Loki slid it off and rubbed the skin that had been pinched by the plastic.</p><p>“Where else are you hurt?”</p><p>“I think she shot me in the chest, but-” Thor began to look down and Loki stopped him with a finger under his chin. </p><p>“Hold still,” Loki begged, and crouched to look at Thor’s front, patting his plaid shirt lightly, finding it soft and dry. </p><p>At the left breast he felt a tear in the fabric and a firm weight met his finger. </p><p>He fished Thor’s phone out of the pocket.</p><p>For a moment, his reeling mind mistook what he found for a spider’s web. A bullet was lodged in the center of the screen, with fractures radiating out through the glass around it.</p><p>“Too bad I didn’t have one of those in my eye,” Thor said, and Loki choked out a wet laugh that was more shock and despair than amusement.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Frigga and Odin remained at the house to answer questions from the police. Loki went to the hospital with his brother, following the ambulance, which was moving at a maddening pace. The driver was crawling. Loki hoped it was to spare Thor any jostling from the rough winter roads, but every second that passed with a knife in Thor’s eye was a cruel century in Loki’s reckoning.</p><p> </p><p>In the waiting room, Loki fumbled through the paperwork, reading most of the questions three or more times before their meanings fully registered. </p><p> </p><p>He knew the main reason for the ER visit: knife in eye, but he wasn’t sure how to define the gunshot wound that had only punched, not pierced, Thor’s chest. Beyond that, he knew little of use outside his brother’s contact information and birth date. He’d never seen Thor’s Social Security number. For known allergies, all Loki could think of was Capitalism and Conservatives, which he kept to himself. He didn’t know if Thor had a primary care physician, or who his insurance provider was, or if he’d had any medical procedures of late. He couldn’t remember the names and dates of his own vaccinations, let alone his brother’s. He didn’t even know if Thor had a DNR. He checked the tiny box next to Full Resuscitation, going over the mark three times to fully blacken it before looking back over the blanks that peppered the rest of the page. </p><p>All the empty spaces on the form felt like failures. When he’d skipped questions on exams in school, it had always been with a shrug. Those had been left blank by choice: he hadn’t bothered to study, so he hadn’t learned the answers. That lack of trivial knowledge had never come back to haunt him. But these questions were already swirling through his head, silently accusing him of betrayal and neglect. </p><p>“Can I stay, or do I have to go home for the night and wait for a call?” Loki asked, handing his clipboard to the woman at the front desk.</p><p>She looked over the paperwork and shook her head.</p><p>“I’ll check for you, but he should be able to go home today.”</p><p>The tone of her voice suggested that Loki should be pleased with this news, so he thanked her and went back to his seat.</p><p>It didn’t seem possible that Thor could go home in a matter of days, let alone hours. Loki tried to console himself with the possibility that she had only read the entry about the unusually shallow gunshot wound and had missed the bit about the knife in Thor’s eye.</p><p> </p><p>Loki sat flipping through old magazines, mechanically turning the pages, running his eyes over them without reading a word. He had spaced out halfway through an issue of <em>Elle Decor</em>, derailed by an artfully lit photo of a cast iron skillet on a butcher block counter top. He was wondering if it would ring like a gong against a human skull--and whether Hela’s might have been fractured--when a nurse came out and invited him to follow her.</p><p>She led him to a small office, where a policeman was waiting for him behind a desk.</p><p>“Oh, please, no,” Loki breathed, and shook his head from side to side in a blur. “He can't be-”</p><p>“He’s fine, he’s fine.” The officer’s eyes went wide and he leapt to his feet, holding his hands palm out, their emptiness oddly reassuring. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Witnesses have to be interviewed separately.”</p><p>“Oh, thank god.” Loki sat down and let the shock bleed out of him in a stream of tears.</p><p>“Your brother’s doing great. I just came from his room. Guy’s a tank.”</p><p>“He’s,” Loki ducked his head and sniffled, “substantial.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki told detective Crowe what he remembered: a woman claiming to know Thor had come to thank him for saving her husband. Thor was a registered dietician, not a heart surgeon, so Loki had assumed the woman was either thanking everyone who’d been involved in her spouse’s care and recovery, or she was the sort who thought it was possible to treat any ailment at home with the right foods, spells, and crystals, and had lucked into success.</p><p>“And you didn’t recognize her?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Your own sister.”</p><p>“I know it’s weird. I hadn’t seen her since I was nine and Thor was twelve. Hela was maybe sixteen,” Loki narrowed his eyes and did the math. “No, fifteen. Sixteen at the end of that year. She came after our mother with a knife because Mom said ‘absolutely not’ when Hela said she needed a dog. Thor got in the way of that one too. Blocked it with his right arm. That was the last time Hela was allowed near us. Me and Thor, I mean. Mom and Dad went to visit her until she turned eighteen and left the state. But she doesn’t look at all like I remember her.”</p><p>“When was this?”</p><p>“Twenty years ago now. I wouldn’t expect her to look exactly the way I remember,” Loki shook his head, “but I’d expect a resemblance.”</p><p>“You didn’t see one?”</p><p>“No. She looks like a different person. Whereas I think I remember you from Mister Robinson’s U.S. History class senior year.”</p><p>The officer laughed and nodded. “You do.”</p><p>“Thor recognized her somehow,” Loki murmured. “Maybe she looks more like herself in profile.” </p><p> </p><p>When the interview was over, Crowe asked Loki to wait a moment while he made a phone call to see how the investigation was proceeding at the house. </p><p>“They’re wrapping things up. You guys won’t have to spend the night in a hotel. Unless you want to.”</p><p>“Thank you.” Loki flicked his eyebrows up in surprise. “I’ll see what the doctors say.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Thor was sitting in a small exam room, sipping water through a straw from a lidded styrofoam cup--an arrangement meant to minimize spills by sickly, medicated drinkers. He had paperwork in his left hand and a bandage over his right eye that looked like a maxi pad. It was so wide, tight, and heavy, it had been taped in place. They’d shaved the right side of his face so that it would stick, and Loki wondered what use they thought Thor could possibly have for half a beard. At his brow, Thor wore a visor with a shield that protected both his wounded socket and his one remaining eye.</p><p>“Here’s your ride,” Crowe said.</p><p>“He looks flatter than I remember him.” Thor grinned and Loki gaped while the doctor snorted.</p><p>“Can I see your right arm?” Crowe asked.</p><p>“The pretty muscles or the gnarly scar?” Thor grinned. Loki huffed and shook his head.</p><p>“Scar, I’m afraid,” Crowe said.</p><p>"Your loss," Thor shrugged, looking at his brother all the while, basking in his exasperation.</p><p>The outer edge of Thor’s right forearm had a deep, curved score in it, several shades darker and noticeably glossier than the rest of it.</p><p>“Thanks,” the detective smiled. “I’m all set.” He dipped his head in farewell and ducked out of their room.</p><p>“Strange,” the doctor said, rising from his stool and offering his hand. </p><p>“Very,” Loki agreed.</p><p>Thor cut in with a stage whisper to say, “That’s his name.”</p><p>“Oh, sorry. Loki Borsson.” Loki saw Thor fluttering his fingers on the arm of his chair in invitation and took the seat to Thor’s right. “So, you’re not admitting him?” </p><p>“No, he’s all set. You two won’t even miss dinner.”</p><p>“Only if the cops cooked it,” Loki said. “Are his prescriptions in that packet, or did you already send them to the pharmacy?” Loki nodded at the hefty stack of papers in Thor’s hand. </p><p>“A script for antibiotics was sent to the pharmacy.” </p><p>“Painkillers?” Loki asked, his tone high and nudging, urging the doctor to finish the sentence.</p><p>“He should be good with acetaminophen and ibuprofen.”</p><p>“You’re kidding.” Loki looked from face to face for bitten back smiles and averted eyes. For some sign of a conspiracy. A joke he wasn’t in on.</p><p>“If he needs something stronger, we can call it in, but he should be all set.”</p><p>“‘Should’ is sounding pretty flimsy after the day we’ve had, so why don’t you just call it in now so we’re not left scrambling to reach you and waiting on the pharmacy while he’s in pain?” Loki felt Thor squeeze his hand and looked down to find their fingers laced together.</p><p>“We could do that,” Strange nodded. </p><p>“Excellent. Let’s,” Loki chirped. Thor heard the sharpness in Loki’s tone and huffed a laugh.</p><p>“How long have you two been together?” Strange asked.</p><p>“All our lives,” Thor said, so swiftly he got it out before Loki’s lips had even parted.</p><p>“Childhood sweethearts?” Strange asked.</p><p>“Something like that.” Thor had amusement low in his breast, bouncing his voice. He heard a puff of air shoot through Loki’s nose, but couldn’t see his brother around the bandage. “Is he Kermit-frowning at me?”</p><p>“It’s definitely a crumpled Muppet expression,” Strange nodded. “Flattened lips. Narrowed eyes.”</p><p>“That’s the one.”</p><p>“I missed it. What did you do?” Strange asked.</p><p>“We’re brothers,” Thor confessed, grinning.</p><p>“Ah,” Strange nodded and darted a glance at their dove-tailed hands. “Sorry. I heard the same surname and missed the resemblance.”</p><p>“There isn’t one,” Loki sighed. “We’re not related.”</p><p>Thor opened his mouth and shut it again. </p><p> </p><p>The doctor went over the care and keeping of Thor’s socket and was rising to leave when Loki pulled a face like Strange had sprouted a second head.</p><p>“And his chest?” Loki said. “Please tell me someone looked at that.”</p><p>“We did,” Strange nodded. ”The phone spread out the impact and the muscle was enough to cushion it. We checked the X-rays. Didn’t even crack a rib. Hell of a bruise, but nothing’s broken.”</p><p>Loki scoffed and dropped back in his seat. He nudged the edge of Thor’s foot. “I cannot fucking believe all your gym-bunny bullshit actually paid off.”  </p><p>“Tiddy power.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Yesssss,” Thor hissed, and pumped Loki’s fist in the air.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Thor gave the doctor hearty thanks and an even heartier handshake--Loki could see the man’s entire body shifting with the motions of Thor’s arm--as they took their leave. Loki braced his hand in Thor’s right armpit like a crutch and guided him through the hospital’s sterile halls.</p><p>“I can still see,” Thor reminded.</p><p>“I know. And you can still fall. You’re full of sedatives.”  </p><p>“Right.”</p><p> </p><p>Thor leaned more heavily on his brother with every step they took. His pace shortened and slowed as the hallways dragged on.</p><p> </p><p>When they reached the vestibule at the end of the labyrinth, Loki had lost any sense of where he was in relation to their car and the road. He couldn’t see either from the window. </p><p>“Wait here,” Loki said, and helped Thor down onto an ugly vinyl sofa.</p><p>“I can take one of those chairs so I’m not hogging all this,” Thor said, but Loki’s hands were on his shoulders holding him down before he could bounce up.</p><p>“This one is under the heat vent where it’s warm,” Loki sighed. “The chairs are by the door. Let yourself have nice things. <em> One </em> nice thing,” Loki amended.</p><p> </p><p>Loki stole the paperwork. He scanned the visit summary and socket care instructions as he curled his way up the endless parking deck stairs. Sometimes he slowed at a long string of jargon, or stopped altogether at the implications of what he had read. </p><p> </p><p>He cursed when there was no sign of his car, then double-checked the numbers on the walls, thinking he’d lost track of himself in the stairwells and gone up a flight or two too many. </p><p>He saw the number three with a green border. This was his floor. </p><p>His next guess was that his car had been stolen and the theme of the day was disaster. He was full of adrenaline and halfway to tears when he remembered he’d driven their mother’s car. An unimposing, ubiquitous silver sedan that seemed to let her get away with speeding. A pickup truck had parked next to it and hidden it from view. Its heated seats had the scents of her skin and perfume embedded in their upholstery. The combination was unexpectedly bracing. Loki sat and read a bit further while the engine warmed up, then dried his eyes with his scarf and spiraled out of the dreary garage, eager to leave its dripping walls and ghastly yellow lights behind him. </p><p> </p><p>Above, the sky was speckled with stars, white against indigo, bright with the cold winter air. It should have been lovely. A heaven of diamonds, and on Christmas Eve. But the night only stood as a reminder that the day had been stolen. And so much more than the day. How much, Loki wasn’t yet certain. He felt as if he and his brother were a skipped stone. They had hit the water once and been bounced, but when and where they’d fully come to rest, he couldn’t tell.</p><p> </p><p>“Stay there,” Loki yelled, shaking his head “no” and holding up his hand, trying to halt his brother as Thor made for the car, but Thor couldn’t hear him through the glass. </p><p>Loki threw it into park and rushed out to grab him. </p><p>“Sorry,” Thor said. “Just wanted to get out of there.”</p><p>“I know, but I need you to be careful.”</p><p>Thor sat down slowly and reclined his seat before letting out a long breath.</p><p>“Does it hurt?” Loki asked, sliding in behind the wheel and fiddling with the heat, aiming the vents at their feet, away from Thor’s eye.</p><p>“Not yet.” Thor flashed a grim smile. “But I think my stomach is walking on thin ice.”</p><p>“Do you want to rest in the car for a while?”</p><p>Thor thought about it for a moment, then sighed. “No, let’s go home...but <em> gently</em>.”</p><p>“And do you want to go home?” Loki asked, almost a whisper. </p><p>Thor looked at him, opened his mouth, and shut it again. “I’d like to try,” he said, finally. “Can’t promise I’ll still feel that way when we get there.”</p><p>“Okay. Tell me if you need me to pull over. And tell me if you want to get a hotel or go to your house. Or mine.”</p><p>Thor nodded and arranged the plastic vomit bag the hospital had provided so that it was open and ready on his lap. His face was green and slack and Loki had nothing for it.</p><p> </p><p>Loki took the back roads home so he could drive slowly. With everyone inside enjoying their holiday dinners, there was no one behind him to resent his snail’s pace. When he peeked at his brother out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thor had his hands splayed over his belly to brace it, and he was looking straight ahead, unblinking, as if willing them home.</p><p> </p><p>“Stop the car,” Thor breathed. </p><p>Loki pulled onto the shoulder and Thor scrambled to get his seat belt undone. </p><p>Thor was retching into the dingy slush at the road’s edge when Loki made it around to him.</p><p>“You can use the bag.”</p><p>“I know,” Thor nodded, and spat a thick string of yellow onto the ground. “But it’ll be even worse if the car smells like puke. If we can’t pull over, then I’ll use the bag.” </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>The half-dozen tire tracks and trails of footprints in the snow from officers and squad cars were the only outward sign of anything awry at the house. The strands of lights that were wound around the maples in the front yard were all lit and glowing a warm, cozy gold. </p><p>Twenty years ago, those trees had been slim enough that the brothers could climb them like poles. Their proportions had kept pace, but tree-climbing had been left behind. Thor and Loki were finished growing now. Well into decline. At forty, the trees were still young, as lithe and fresh as yearlings.</p><p> </p><p>Loki checked his watch. Only seven o’clock. The preceding hours had accomplished the greatest alteration of time he had ever experienced, stretching the afternoon into something longer than the entire decade that had come before.</p><p>Now all the hours that were to come belonged to Thor. Loki didn’t dare wonder how much time lay ahead. Each second had become inestimably precious to him, having been so dearly bought.</p><p> </p><p>He watched for hesitation from his brother as they went through the front door, but there was no hitch in Thor’s step.</p><p>“No bending,” Loki reminded, and grabbed the hood of Thor’s parka to stop him as he went to untie his shoes. Loki dropped to a crouch and undid their laces, then held Thor’s arm to steady him as he stepped out of his boots. He sat Thor at the kitchen table with a stainless steel bowl, a glass of water, and orders to stay put.</p><p> </p><p>He found his parents sitting side by side on their bed, holding hands in the soft light from the reading lamp while Frigga talked on the phone. When Odin saw Loki silhouetted in the door, he squeezed Frigga’s hand and followed Loki out to the kitchen. Odin’s phone kept ringing, but he kept declining the calls.</p><p>“Where’s Mom?” Thor asked.</p><p>“In our room, on the phone with her brother.”</p><p>“She okay?”</p><p>“Under the circumstances,” Odin nodded. “What about you two? What do you need?”</p><p>“Gatorade?” Loki asked, looking to Thor while he said it. Thor nodded. Loki rifled through the cupboards and came up with the recommended painkillers. “Jell-O. Applesauce. Popsicles. Do you want chicken, beef, or veggie broth?”</p><p>“Chicken.”</p><p>“Smoothie things?”</p><p>“Strawberries and bananas,” Thor said. “And pineapple for my bruises.”</p><p>Loki added half a dozen other things to the list, along with instructions to pick up Thor’s prescriptions. Odin went off to fetch them while Loki got Thor started on acetaminophen and then took him upstairs to wash and change out of his bloodied clothes.</p><p> </p><p>Loki watched his brother’s reflection in the mirror while Thor brushed his teeth. Thor looked at his bandages and stroked his half-beard.</p><p>“We can get that trimmed off tomorrow, if you like,” Loki offered. </p><p>Thor nodded and leaned down to spit. His movements were off. Slow. Cautious.</p><p>“Looks like most of the right side of my face is missing,” Thor sighed, before moving on to mouthwash. </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>“I think this thing is giving me a headache,” Thor said, and grimaced as he lifted off the visor and set it on the dresser. </p><p>And there was Thor’s only eye, naked, helpless, and at ease in Loki’s company. It was the greatest demonstration of trust to which Loki had ever been privy. </p><p>“Shall we?” Thor asked, shrugging off his flannel and eyeing his t-shirt with dismay. He bunched the fabric into a loop atop his shoulders, but the crew neckline was small and tight.</p><p>Loki pulled the front forward while Thor braced the back and together they gingerly shimmied it over his head, keeping it far from his bandages. They heard threads snapping in the seam and ignored them.</p><p>“Oh,” Loki breathed. </p><p>The mottled purple spot on Thor’s left breast was two inches wide and three inches tall. A shield the size of a credit card had saved him. Saved them all. Even Hela had been spared, given Thor had hit her only once, and gently. Loki knew she would have picked them off by the most sadistic path, strategically maximizing the agony. Thor first. The favorite. All beating hearts broken, all hope lost. Then Loki, to make sure Odin and Frigga outlived both of their sons. Then Frigga, to take everything from Odin. And, finally, Odin, to let him know he was nothing to her.</p><p>Whatever Thor had or hadn’t known about the gunshot in that moment hadn’t mattered. It hadn’t rattled him enough to stop him swinging. And then he’d taken a knife to the eye with a wry stoicism that denied their sister any satisfaction in what would be her only victory.</p><p>December had always been the month of miracles. Loki had never believed them. Now he had more than he could count--some with sworn statements, prescriptions, and bloody shirts to back them up. Thor was alive. Doubly impossible, as life was outlandish enough on its own: if the universe gathered itself into just the right clusters of inanimate atoms, then animate, conscious life ensued. And it now appeared that if you set just the right man in front of just the wrong woman, life prevailed. </p><p>Whatever forces were at work within this world, Loki would now be willing to bet the farm they were in league with his brother.</p><p> </p><p>Thor watched Loki’s eyes well over and caught glints of light as the tears stuttered down his crumpling features.</p><p>“It’s the funniest thing,” Thor murmured. </p><p>Loki shook his head. “It really isn’t.” </p><p>Thor laughed and ruffled his brother’s hair, then let his hand trail down to squeeze the back of Loki’s neck. “I bought the phone that folded because it was like the first ones we had, remember?” Thor asked.</p><p>Loki nodded, short and fast. </p><p>“We wore the paint off the buttons with all our texting,” Thor murmured. “Hitting seven four times to get to S. Nostalgia.” He gave himself a rueful smile. “I’d only had it a week. My old one did a swan dive into the toilet.” Loki sobbed a laugh and Thor dried his brother’s face with his thumbs. “Twice as thick as my last phone. If anyone had called or texted while I was at the store, I would have moved it to my right coat pocket. But no one did. So it was still there for the bullet.”</p><p>Loki couldn’t hug his brother without pressing the bruise or risking a bump to Thor’s bandages. He laid his hands over Thor’s collarbones and watched them disappear beneath Thor’s fingers as Thor pressed them more firmly in place. </p><p>Loki opened his eyes when he felt Thor’s nose against the tip of his own. </p><p>“You’re falling asleep on your feet,” Thor whispered, voice low and gently laughing, face impossibly, irrepressibly sweet.</p><p>“I think you should try to sleep, actually,” Loki said, shaking himself awake and drumming his fingers on the fronts of Thor’s shoulders in farewell. “I’m still afraid the sedative might take you down. Plus, I think it would be good to keep your left eye still so your right doesn’t try to follow it.”</p><p>Thor nodded. </p><p>Removing his ruined eye had only been half the surgeon’s job. Inserting an orbital implant and attaching muscles to it had been the tricky part. The right eye still tried to do everything the left did. Thor didn’t want to hinder what would already be strained healing.</p><p> </p><p>Loki fetched a flannel button-up that would be easy to get on and off and a cozy pair of sweatpants from Thor’s suitcase. </p><p>“Ice pack for the bruise?” Loki asked.</p><p>“Maybe later. I’m still cold from the hospital.”</p><p>Loki nodded, then frowned around a hum and disappeared down the hall. Thor heard the squeak of hinges followed by muffled thuds. Loki came back with his arms full of extra blankets and the cord of a heating pad trailing behind him. He propped Thor up in bed with pillows to keep his head elevated and tucked the heating pad into his side, then all but buried him in blankets.</p><p> </p><p>The sound of light, quick steps on the staircase had both of the brothers calling “Mom” in unison.</p><p>Frigga's face went wide when she saw Thor.</p><p>“They sent you home?” she breathed.</p><p>“Don’t get me started,” Loki said, and returned her embrace, rubbing her back while she clung to him. </p><p>“So, what’s the story?” </p><p>Loki could hear her voice shaking, though her hands were steady as she sat beside Thor’s shin and squeezed his knee.</p><p>“Ummm, Lo?” Thor yawned.</p><p>“Enucleation.” Loki whispered it in the vain hope that saying the word softly could dull its blow. “They had to take the whole eye.”</p><p>Frigga dropped her head and cursed. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” </p><p> </p><p>She held Thor’s hand while Loki explained the rest of it. He told her that the implant was already in there, with muscles attached, so it could move. It would help the tissues to hold their shape rather than filling in and collapsing. There was a conformer, like a giant contact lens, sitting over the implant, as protection and a placeholder for a prosthesis if Thor ever wanted one. His right eyelids were stitched shut, but with dissolving thread, so they wouldn’t have to do anything about that. The pressure bandage had to stay put until the surgeon took it off a week later. No showering, bending, or lifting--about which Thor was going to need reminders. He’d have nausea, headaches, bruising, swelling, and it would be at least two months before things were fully healed up. </p><p>“And the bullet?” she asked.</p><p>“Phone stopped it. His chest is fine.” Loki shook his head and went wide-eyed at the improbable truth. “Dolly Parton here didn’t even crack a rib.” </p><p>Thor quietly chanted, “Tiddies. Tiddies. Tiddies,” while Frigga giggled and squeezed his palm.</p><p>“I wish I could say you got those from me, but I’m a surfboard.”</p><p>“Come to the gym and build boobies with me.”</p><p>“Pfff. Pass.”</p><p>“You’re not allowed near a gym until March,” Loki reminded.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>The shudder of the house at the shutting of the garage door meant that Odin had come home. Loki hurried downstairs to fetch Thor’s medications and something to wash them down with. </p><p>Odin’s phone rang again and Loki heard him greet the biggest gossip on the street. He gave her only the barest details: that everyone was alive and safe and he was grateful for the concern, that no one else in the neighborhood was in any danger, and that he didn’t want to interrupt her holiday so he was saying goodnight. </p><p>Loki knew she would pass this scant information on to all the other people who had been calling Odin. By tomorrow morning, the details would likely be available on the local news and it would be Christmas, so no one would have time to call them.</p><p><br/><br/>Their nerves were stretched so tight it crushed their appetites, leaving them in a mood for light comfort. Loki heated broth in matching mugs so he and Thor could be warmed from within. </p><p>When Thor had finished his drink and downed his meds, he settled in to sleep. Loki sat up in the twin bed on the other side of the room and listened. The distance, though slight, was still too great to let him hear. He pulled the chair from the desk and stood it by Thor’s bedside, then sat, pretending to read, while he listened to Thor’s breathing.</p><p>There were no colorful strands of fairy lights and no evergreen branches tied with red bows in the brothers’ bedroom. The sense that they had come home for holiday celebrations was difficult to maintain. It felt more like a sick day from school, where you finally had an excuse to ditch work and you didn’t get to enjoy it.</p><p>The bedroom door was open and the house beyond was silent. Any other Christmas Eve, Thor and Frigga would have been up to their elbows in cookie dough. The two of them would have been teasing each other and cracking jokes while Loki provided the occasionally-necessary pair of clean, dry hands. Odin would have been reading, keeping the music going, and tending the fire. </p><p>The silence dealt another injury to their now-battered illusions of safety and permanence. The ripples of Hela’s blow were still emanating from the source, rocking boats that felt flimsy to their passengers. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“What time is it?” Thor asked, after groping for the phone that would have been on the nightstand.</p><p>“After midnight now,” Loki said. “Merry Christmas.”</p><p>“Merry Christmas,” Thor smiled. </p><p>“How’s your head?”</p><p>“Not too bad.”</p><p>“What about your belly?”</p><p>“Seems okay,” Thor shrugged.</p><p>“Hungry?”</p><p>“Not really. And I’d rather not risk anything yet.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki brought water so Thor could wash down his next round of Tylenol, then resumed his seat by the bedside. </p><p>“Get some sleep,” Thor said.</p><p>“I will.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Thor woke again to find the sun up and his brother still in the chair, watching him with red-rimmed eyes.</p><p>“Lo?”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Did you sleep at all?” </p><p>Loki shook his head. “Too wired.”</p><p>“Your butt is going to hate you for spending the night like that.”</p><p>“Yep. And you’re going to hate me for this,” Loki said, and handed Thor his visor.</p><p> </p><p>Loki took Thor’s arm as they went downstairs and wouldn’t release it until Thor was seated at the breakfast table.</p><p>“Put this under your tongue for me.” Loki offered his brother a thermometer.</p><p>“That’s what she said.”</p><p>Loki rolled his eyes, but failed to fully suppress a smile. “It’s about to go in your ass.” He hovered at Thor’s elbow while they waited for the beep.</p><p>“Ninety-eight point six,” Thor crowed.</p><p>“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Loki sighed, and gave Thor a glass of water and a handful of pills. “What do you think about breakfast?”</p><p>“I feel okay. And I’m starving.”</p><p>“Let's start with the applesauce. If you have to throw it up, it’ll probably still taste the same the second time around.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki wanted yogurt. Something rich and soothing with protein that didn’t involve cooking an egg. But he knew the scent of someone eating yogurt when you weren’t also eating yogurt was nearly as bad as someone heating up fish in the office microwave. He didn’t want to invite nausea. He ate a banana and a handful of nuts while he waited to see how Thor’s addled belly would handle the meal.</p><p>When the applesauce showed no signs of making a curtain call, they moved on to toast with jam. They ate in the dining room. It felt overly formal for the occasion--and for their attire--but it faced east, which let them enjoy the sun. The table’s centerpieces, with their fragrant fir sprigs, wheels of dried orange, and bundles of cinnamon bark, were a welcome breath of festive distraction.</p><p>“Think they’re still up for celebrating this year?” Thor asked, nodding his head in the direction of their parents’ room.</p><p>“I hope so. We could all use a dose of normal.”</p><p>“And cookies.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Odin and Frigga found their sons in the family room, stretched out full length on the sectional, with their heads nearly touching on the pillows piled in the center. <em> The Nightmare Before Christmas </em> was playing and the tree was still aglow, but something smelled like summer. Frigga searched the room until she spotted two drained smoothies sitting on the end table. </p><p>“Good afternoon,” Thor teased.</p><p>She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him, but smiled through it helplessly and joined them in their drowsy nest.</p><p> </p><p>Frigga watched the boys while she drank her tea, seeing tired faces and slumped shoulders. </p><p>Loki passed out within five minutes. Thor snuck a peek at him and then lowered the volume on the TV.</p><p>“Did you sleep at all last night?” Frigga whispered.</p><p>“I got about fourteen hours, all told,” Thor nodded.</p><p>“What about him?”</p><p>Thor frowned and shook his head no. “You?”</p><p>“Took me about six hours, but I finally got there. This is the latest I've slept since college.”</p><p> </p><p>Thor’s head began to nod and dip less than ten minutes later. When she heard his breathing deepen into sleep, Frigga turned off the television and left them to their resting.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>When the brothers woke again, the sun was streaming in through the window behind them, warming the tops of their heads as it slid down the western sky. A soft alarm was going off on Loki’s phone.</p><p>“Time for your Tylenol,” Loki said.</p><p>Thor spun a mock-enthusiastic finger through the air.</p><p>They stretched and yawned their way to the kitchen. Loki doled out Thor’s pills and then stuck the thermometer in his brother’s mouth and stood waiting for its answer, going up on tiptoe to see the tiny digital screen. Again it beeped at ninety-eight point six. Loki’s sigh of relief gusted against Thor’s throat.</p><p>Frigga had made up some of the Jell-O while they slept. Thor made short work of the entire dish, then stood at the counter, slicing a pineapple. </p><p>The knock of the knife against the board drew Odin and Frigga to the kitchen. </p><p>“We were thinking about taking it easy for another day and just having breakfast for dinner tonight,” Frigga said, and reached to put Loki’s rumpled hair in order. </p><p>“Think your stomach can handle pancakes?” Loki asked, cocking an eyebrow at Thor.</p><p>“Stomach is good,” Thor nodded. “It’s the socket that’s bugging me.”</p><p>“Bugging you how?” Loki’s curls streamed through his mother's fingers as he crossed the room. He took Thor’s arm and squeezed it lightly, just above the wrist, stilling Thor’s hand at its cutting.</p><p>“Just,” Thor shrugged, “achy and scratchy. Like it’s cut up and bruised, which it is.” </p><p>“Do you want to try the real painkillers?”</p><p>“Maybe later.”</p><p>“And do you want to go do something that doesn’t involve your eyeball darting all over the place.”</p><p>“Like what?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Loki sighed. “Maybe you could try resting. Go lie down or meditate. I’ll finish this.” Loki took the knife and Thor went back to the den to sit in the sun before it sank behind the trees.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>After fruit and pancakes, they borrowed their father’s beard trimmer and Loki shaved the left side of Thor’s jaw to match the right. He smiled despite everything at the first glimpse of his brother’s bare face he’d had in half a dozen years.  </p><p> </p><p>It wasn’t the first time he’d taken an electric razor to Thor’s head. On the previous occasion, Loki had cut off all of Thor’s hair. Thor had spent grades nine through twelve growing it out for Locks of Love. After graduation, he’d enlisted Loki’s help. Loki put the two inch guard on the trimmer and took off all the hair close to the root rather than at the base of Thor’s neck. It meant the ponytail would be as long as possible and Thor’s hair would be the shortest it had been since he was a baby. Loki had been of the opinion that the more loving thing to do would be to keep it long because it was beautiful, or, if it had to be cut, to give it to him, as he would have appreciated it on levels no stranger could have fathomed. </p><p> </p><p>“I need a shower,” Thor said. “And not just because I’m covered in whiskers.”</p><p>“You’re not allowed to take showers yet. And you smell fine.”</p><p>“I feel grubby though. And I could use some…”</p><p>“Some what?”</p><p>“Soothing.”</p><p>Loki nodded. “Use Mom’s tub. It’s practically a swimming pool.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki turned the bathroom’s heat lamp on high and set Thor up with lavender oil to help him relax. He hovered in the doorway and yelped when he saw Thor reaching for the faucet handles.</p><p>“No bending,” Loki chided, and went over to fiddle with the water temperature himself. </p><p>He put scalding hot water in at first, wanting it to warm the cast iron and enamel. He waited until the temperatures had equalized, then added hot water until it was at the furthest edge of comfortable.</p><p>“Do you think your bruise is ready for heat?” Loki asked, stirring the lavender oil into the water with his hand as he perched on the edge of the tub. His skin was red everywhere it had been submerged.</p><p>“I’m probably still supposed to be icing it,” Thor sighed. He grimaced as he prodded his chest with his fingers. “But, honestly, fuck that. I’d rather melt the lump out of it, even if it means it’ll look like hell a little longer.”</p><p>“Get in then, and I’ll fill it up the rest of the way around you.”</p><p>Thor sank in with a groan that pulled Loki’s skin into goosebumps despite the heat. "This is perfect."</p><p>"I think you could poach an egg in it." </p><p>"I think I just poached both of my eggs," Thor said, then snorted and started giggling in time with his brother.</p><p>“And what do you want to do about your hair?” Loki asked, eyeing the strands that were flowing over Thor’s shoulders and collarbones in Art Nouveau curves. They seemed to have been contrived by the universe for the sole purpose of tempting Loki’s fingers.</p><p>“Wash the hospital out of it,” Thor decided.</p><p>“In that case I’ll get some extra towels. And I’ll try to find something we can rinse it with.” </p><p> </p><p>In a just world, Loki would have returned bearing a porcelain ewer by Sèvres. In this one, he came back with the plastic Wolverine collectible cup from Pizza Hut that was always hiding at the back of the kitchen cupboard, behind the pretty crystal, still too beloved to be chucked into the recycling bin. </p><p>Loki dropped into the tufted armchair in the corner, where their father normally sat and read to their mother while she soaked her achy joints. He played a lazy lo-fi mix on his phone. It blurred with the splashes and drips from the bath as Thor washed. </p><p> </p><p>Loki could still see the bruise beneath the water. Dark and strange, but unmistakably alive. It was an anomaly on Thor’s body that would soon be consigned to the past, joining the skinned knees from Thor’s skater phase and the gaps where his baby teeth had fallen out. </p><p>The eye was something else. Something finished. A piece of Thor that was now locked in the past. Lost. Dead. Its absence was a thread that would wind through all his days.</p><p> </p><p>“All right,” Thor sighed, after he’d soaked for almost an hour, “I’m turning into a prune.”</p><p>He lowered the back of his head into the bath while Loki steered his bandages away from the water.</p><p>The soft roar of bubbles and the scrub of churning of fingers were loud in the quiet room, magnified by pale stone and porcelain. Loki offered his mute apology, lathering Thor’s hair, gently stretching the tense muscles in his scalp and tracing the tender clefts behind his ears. Sorry for so much more than yesterday’s losses. For everything he had cost them every year that had come before. For the ice he had so often offered to Thor’s warmth, granting, at most, a twitch at the corner of his mouth when Thor’s joy was brimming over. For how he had hated his brother for how much he loved him, refusing a hundred hugs because they weren’t kisses in the dark. How he had resented him for having such power over him, declining so many invitations he was quietly desperate to accept. Words would be no better suited to begging pardon. This was simpler. There were fewer ways it could go wrong, and the most likely misinterpretation would still be the truth.</p><p> </p><p>Thor’s hair was resting on the back of his neck, which made it easy for Loki’s fingers to go from the one to the other, stroking and kneading as they went, following the muscles that flowed down into the shoulders while his thumbs pressed in along Thor’s spine, increasing the tension there so that it could be soothed by release. </p><p> </p><p>When excuses had run out, Loki shielded the right half of Thor’s face with the edge of his palm, keeping the water back as he poured it over the suds, slowly revealing smooth blond waves where a messy froth of white had been. </p><p>He wrapped Thor’s hair in a fluffy towel and helped him to stand, then had him brace his hands on the wall while he rinsed the rest of Thor’s skin.</p><p> “Water is still hot,” Thor said, taking Loki’s offered arm as he stepped out of the bath. “Wouldn’t need much of a warm-up if you wanted to get in. I only peed in it twice.”</p><p>“A personal best,” Loki smiled, and helped Thor into the chair before crouching down to dry Thor’s shins and feet.</p><p>“I’m not looking forward to how cold the rest of the house is going to feel after being in here.”</p><p>“I’ll turn the heat up,” Loki said.</p><p>“And then come back for a bath so we can keep basking.”</p><p>“I think I’m too tired to take one, but I’ll come back and bask with you.” </p><p> </p><p>Loki nudged the thermostat up five degrees and got a pinch to his behind from his mother, who peeked over his shoulder and said, “Oh, you can turn it up higher than that.”</p><p>“What about your hot flashes?” Loki asked.</p><p>“I can go outside. You know how your brother loves to be warm.”</p><p>Loki hummed and nodded and turned it up another five degrees, winning himself an approving pat on the bottom before he went back to join his brother.</p><p> </p><p>“Painkillers not cutting it?” Loki asked, on finding Thor sitting upright with his head level but his eye closed.</p><p>“Not really. Trying to keep the implant still. I think I’ll start the codeine when we’re done here.”</p><p>“Good. There’s no shame in not wanting to feel like shit.” Loki stared at the bruise that was peeking up over the edge of Thor’s towel. Purple and alive. Blooming. It looked worse than it had the day before. “Can I take a few pictures?”</p><p>“If you like,” Thor said, and Loki ran off to fetch his camera. </p><p> </p><p>Thor was used to this. Though Loki was adept at catching chance, split-second events, his photos were posed as often as he could manage it. The careful adjustments to Thor’s body and clothing were commonplace to him now. And Loki’s acrobatics, straining to reach the perfect angle, no longer seemed awkward or excessive. Thor merely sat back and enjoyed the process, allowing his brother to tip his head and style his hair, or holding a reflector just out of frame to provide the right light. The end result was always worth it, and it was often the only point in their time together when his brother would touch him. </p><p> </p><p>When Loki was finished with his pictures, he made maple oatmeal for Thor to have with his codeine so the drug wouldn’t make him sick. They spent the rest of the evening drowsing on the sofa in soft pajamas, only moving when Loki’s alarm went off, telling them it was time for Thor to take more meds and check his temperature. </p><p> </p><p>Their mother left the Christmas lights on when she went to bed. The tree in the corner stood sentinel, sending its soft perfume of balsam into the boys’ dreams. Both of the brothers dreamt they were birds, but neither mentioned it when they woke. The warm, jumbled glow of the multicolored strands let them see their way to the stairs, though their muscles knew the path by rote. </p><p>Thor fell asleep seconds after his head hit the pillow. </p><p>Loki sat listening, trying to breathe silently to better hear his brother’s breathing, wondering why he’d ever worried about anything else.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Thor rolled over more than an hour later and saw his brother’s dark silhouette in the chair by the bedside.</p><p>“Can you take me back down to the den?” Thor whispered.</p><p>“Are you all right?”</p><p>“I’m fine.”</p><p>Loki half-carried Thor down the steps and didn’t let him go until they were standing in the silent glow of the Christmas tree again.</p><p>“No bending or straining,” Loki hissed, wanting to yell, but trying to whisper, rushing forward to take over when Thor immediately started moving the ottoman on his own. He pushed it into the corner of the sectional under Thor’s direction. Thor tossed blankets and pillows onto it, bootlegging a bed, then climbed under the covers and patted the space in front of him. </p><p>“Don’t like sleeping in a twin anymore?” Loki asked.</p><p>“I’ve never liked it, but that’s not why I moved us.”</p><p>Loki waited a beat. When no explanation was forthcoming, he sighed. “So,” he nudged, “why did we move?”</p><p>Thor patted the cushion again. “Because you and that bony ass of yours were going to sit up all night in that shitty wooden chair again. If you can’t sleep, you might as well be comfortable.”</p><p>Loki appreciated the “can’t.” This wasn’t a “won’t.” There was no choice to be made. No stubbornness in his insistence on listening. No room for reluctance or resentment. It was as necessary as breathing because it was breathing. Thor’s. Which Thor himself was not in a state to guarantee.</p><p>Loki hummed and curled up in front of his brother. Thor’s eye was lost in shadow against the pillows and the blank span of the bandage was loud but speechless. Loki watched his brother’s lips as he spoke. “Codeine can slow your breathing.”</p><p>“I know, I’m sorry.” Thor stroked Loki’s hair back from his face. “I’ll go back to Tylenol soon. I just need a good night’s sleep.”</p><p>“Nothing to be sorry about,” Loki soothed, taking Thor’s hand and squeezing it, feeling the bones shifting beneath his fingers. “If anyone on this planet deserves a narcotics-induced escape, it’s you. It’s just something we need to watch.”</p><p>Thor hummed a shy sound and shuffled closer until their knees and foreheads were touching. “Mmm, you’re warm... and your wrist smells like lavender shortbread.”</p><p>“That sounds like a prelude to cannibalism.”</p><p>“How dare you. I would never,” Thor whispered, and started gnawing Loki’s knuckles. Thor fell asleep not long after, with his lips on Loki’s fingers and his breath puffing across the back of Loki’s hand, moving in time with Loki’s own lungs, hour after hour, until Loki wondered how he ever imagined a pill would stop his brother when a knife and bullet couldn't.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Loki woke to a pink glow coming through the window, blending with the light from the Christmas tree to turn the whole room a rosy gold. He had rolled over some time in the night and Thor had caught him by the waist. Whether Thor had scooted forward or dragged him back--or if he had shuffled backward himself--Loki didn’t know. But he could feel Thor’s breath on his neck, and Thor’s morning erection was flexing against his ass every now and again, always in time with an inhale. It felt like flipping over a watch with a sapphire caseback and seeing all its inner workings, polished and perfect, happily ticking along.  </p><p> </p><p>Half an hour later, Thor hummed and squeezed his brother, then curled his fingers, <em> one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, </em> low across Loki’s belly, stroking the soft skin below his navel where his shirt had ridden up. He punctuated it with a kiss behind Loki’s ear and promptly fell asleep again. Or went still. Loki couldn’t swear his brother had been wholly--or even remotely--conscious.</p><p>Not for the first time, Loki wanted to call Jane and say <em>Tell me everything I'll never know about my brother.</em> <em>Operative word </em>my<em>. As in </em>mine<em>. As in</em> I should know<em>. It’s absurd not to. Obscene. I need every detail.</em></p><p>All the years had left so many gaps. Lapses. Loki’s knowledge of his brother felt like a boat made of holes. Too many to catch up with now. And anything he learned would likely have offshoots and origins in the blank days that had come before.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Not more than an hour later, Thor squeezed him again and passed the side of his thumb back and forth across Loki’s belly button. He pressed his mouth to the bend of Loki’s neck and left it there for over a minute before he tightened his lips into a kiss. Then another. And another.</p><p>“Finally get some sleep?” Thor’s voice was low and rough. The sound you’d expect from a centuries-old oak, but not a soft-skinned thing of thirty-two.</p><p>“We’ve been sleeping for days.”</p><p>“Those were naps.” Thor kissed him and squeezed him again. “They don’t count. Only night-sleep goes on the board.”</p><p>“Well, in that case, you can put me down for,” Loki could only guess at the span, “four hours? Maybe five.”</p><p>“No, that’s pitiful. Try again.” Thor tickled Loki’s waist and lightly bit his shoulder. “Can you lift your head up?”</p><p>Loki did so, and Thor slid his left arm under Loki’s neck with a groan of relief.</p><p>“How’s your eye?” Loki asked, and sank down into the warmth of Thor’s inner elbow, feeling his brother’s pulse undulating against his throat.</p><p>“Still good.” Thor was thumbing Loki’s navel again and it took a moment for the words to register.</p><p>“Three cheers for opioids.”</p><p>“Mm,” Thor agreed. </p><p>“How’s the rest of you?”</p><p>“Um,” Thor took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he considered. “I feel like molasses,” he decided. “In a nice way. But I think I need to get outside and stretch my legs before they atrophy.</p><p>Loki started to get up, but Thor pinned him to the couch again and held him fast against his front.</p><p>“Later,” Thor said. “You’ve still got sleeping to do.”</p><p>“I don’t know if I can.”</p><p>“Well, try. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just lie here like turds until Mom and Dad get up.”</p><p>Loki passed out again after only three minutes spent lying in Thor’s arms, getting his belly rubbed. </p><p>Thor had to stifle laughter at his brother’s soft, bubbling snores.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>They woke to the scents of coffee and banana bread and scurried out to the kitchen to catch both while they were still hot. </p><p>“Think you're up for doing the big dinner today?” Frigga asked.</p><p>Thor grinned and nodded before he disappeared behind the open refrigerator door.</p><p>“No bending,” Loki scolded. “And put your visor on.”</p><p>“Noooo,” Thor groaned, but straightened and marched toward the stairs anyway. </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>“How is he?” Frigga whispered. She slid into the empty seat beside Loki and started straightening the squirrel’s nest his hair had become.</p><p>“He’s, um...” Loki pulled his lips between his teeth. He flexed his nostrils, held his breath, and stopped blinking, but it wasn’t enough. Tears made it down his cheeks and his face crumpled. He hung his head and held up his palms. “I don’t know how he can stand it.”</p><p>She nodded and pulled him sideways until his head was on her shoulder.</p><p>“He’s been so,” Loki huffed a fond sound, “sweet. And silly. And I can’t tell if he’s in denial or if he’s already over it and he’s moved on to picking up <em> my </em> pieces.”</p><p>“And how are your pieces?”</p><p>Loki sobbed a laugh. “It’s taking every ounce of my self-control to keep from running upstairs right now to check on him.”</p><p>She kissed the top of his head and squeezed him.</p><p>“I want to board up the windows and doors,” he confessed. “Hire an armed guard.”</p><p>She nodded and kissed him again. “I know.”</p><p>“I’m thinking about name-changes and relocation. Secrecy on par with WITSEC. And he wants to go out for a walk.”</p><p>They both laughed and then cocked their ears at the sound of Thor’s feet on the stairs.</p><p>“Are these duck peas, or people peas?” Thor asked, as he rifled through the freezer.</p><p>“They can be duck peas,” Frigga said.</p><p>Thor put them in a dish of water in the microwave to thaw. By his new bulk, Loki gauged him to be wearing every article of clothing he had brought. </p><p>“I take it we’re going to the river,” Loki sighed. </p><p>Thor nodded.</p><p>Loki trudged upstairs to put on all of his clothes. </p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>The days had been cold, so the snow had remained light and fluffy. It whispered and flew off like sparrows as they disturbed it with their feet.</p><p>“How’s your head?” Loki asked, watching breath after breath leave their lips as white clouds.</p><p>“Cold,” Thor admitted. His visor had fogged up the moment they'd left the house. Now he was slowly picking his way along the sidewalk.</p><p>Loki squeezed Thor's arm and then looped his own through it, linking them at the elbow and leading Thor along. “Do you want to wrap my scarf around it?”</p><p>“No, I’ll be all right, but thank you. I never felt cold when I was little. Did you?”</p><p>“No. I was always soaking my mittens with sweat.”</p><p>“Same,” Thor laughed. “And then my hands would smell like feet.”</p><p>Loki giggled and nodded.</p><p>Thor sighed. “How did we get so old?”</p><p>“You nearly didn’t,” Loki murmured, remembering the scar on Thor’s arm.</p><p>Loki had been young enough when it had happened that jumping off the roof with a bedsheet for a parachute had still seemed reasonable. The stabbing, though strange and upsetting to everyone around him, hadn’t shaken him. Mortality had still been an idea that only existed on paper. </p><p>For the last twenty years, their sister Hela had been much the same. Still on patrol, but not truly expected to return. Now Loki had to hope that there had been no fuck-ups on the part of the police that might let her off on a technicality, and that she couldn’t successfully enter an insanity defense. He was old enough to know he couldn’t count on either of those things. Only hope. </p><p>And he did feel old. There was no more magic keeping stars afloat. No second life being lived by his reflection in the mirror. The world was work, bills, and worry--and that was when things were going well.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>At the park that sat at the bend of the river, they brushed snow from a bench and sank down with synced groans. The frozen wood chilled their backsides within seconds of their sitting on it.</p><p>“Snow pants,” Thor remembered. “That’s why we were always comfortable in the cold.”</p><p>“Yes, but I’ll take being chilly over looking like I’m wearing a garbage bag.”</p><p>“I want the trash pants.”</p><p>“Of course you do,” Loki laughed, and scooted closer to Thor so that their sides kept each other warm.</p><p> </p><p>The peas had been hot when they’d left, but were cooling off fast. Thor threw a handful into the shallow water and the river leapt up as a hundred ducks took flight and scrambled toward the food.</p><p>When the boys were small, there had been a White Pekin duck who traveled with the flock that wintered at this spot. It would eat from their hands. An escapee from a farm, perhaps, or an Easter gift that had been abandoned. Now there were only mallards, with their cheerful yellow bills and bright orange feet, muttering and churning.</p><p>Loki looked back over this shoulder at the swing set. It was dwarfed now, both by his own height and by that of the trees that had grown tall around it. He and Thor had planned to live in this park when they were little, riding the swings by day and throwing canvas over the A-frame of the swing set to make a tent they could camp in by night. </p><p>In those days, they had sailed until the chains were parallel to the ground and it had always felt like the precursor to further heights, as if the universe had been taking note and saw that they were eager and able to soar. Their expectations of the future had encompassed extremes. They had one life at the park, avoiding the hassle of work, taking baths and meals at their then-still-immortal parents’ house, keeping fit by swinging. And they had another life in something like Versailles, with scrollwork, gilding, and plush carpets, where they made a fortune on art and writing that were celebrated and clamored for the whole world over.</p><p>“Nothing is what we thought it would be, is it?” Loki asked, grabbing another handful of peas and throwing it to the birds.</p><p>Thor laughed. “Not even a little.”</p><p>“I haven’t really felt safe since that last summer before I moved out after college.”</p><p>“Same,” Thor nodded. “I always expected to have things figured out at that age, and when I got there,” he shook his head, “not even close. And I’m still as far from the answers as I ever was.”</p><p>“Exactly. The goal posts just keep shifting. Every time I think I'm worrying about the right things, I get hit with a hundred other things I should have been worrying about instead. Or <em> too</em>.” </p><p>“Yep,” Thor smiled, and put his arm around Loki’s shoulders.</p><p> </p><p>They shook the remaining food onto the ground at their feet, just to put themselves in the center of a whirling swarm of birds, then waited for them to clear off into the water.</p><p>“My ass has reached the so-cold-it-feels-like-it’s-burning stage,” Loki admitted.</p><p>“Mine too.”</p><p>Loki rose and helped Thor to his feet. On their way to the gate, Thor tapped the steel frame of the swing set and set it ringing.</p><p>“We never slept here, did we?” Thor murmured.</p><p>Loki stared at the blond waves that were spilling out the back of his brother’s red stocking cap. “No, we didn’t.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When they neared the house, they saw fresh tire tracks in the driveway, leaving the garage. It hurried them into the house where they both called, “Mom?” a bit more firmly than they meant to. </p><p>“In the kitchen.”</p><p>They found her stirring chocolate chips into a bowl of dough. “Are your hands cold?” Frigga asked.</p><p>“Frozen,” they chimed.</p><p>“Gimme.” She set down the spoon and waved them both over with a flutter of her fingers.</p><p>Loki put his thumbs on the back of her neck and laid his palms and fingers down over her collarbones. Thor raised his visor to press his left cheek to her right. He put his hands up her shirt around her waist. All three sighed in relief. </p><p>“Where’s Dad?” Thor asked.</p><p>“He’s running errands for me.”</p><p>“I’ll take over stirring,” Loki sighed, when his fingers had finally warmed.</p><p>“That’s my job.” Thor narrowed his eye and feigned a frown.</p><p>“No straining.”</p><p>“Mom, Loki’s Grinching on my Christmas.”</p><p>“Mmhmm,” Frigga nodded, and started measuring out sugar for the next recipe.</p><p>“Here,” Loki said, and aimed his ass at his brother.</p><p>“Am I spanking you for Grinching?”</p><p>“No, you’re taking my phone and putting together a Christmas playlist.”</p><p>“Password?”</p><p>“All uppercase. Five N four K three five.”</p><p>“Snakes,” Thor grinned, typing it in. “I thought it was going to be H zero R five three five.”</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p>“Which reminds me,” Thor murmured.</p><p>“What are you doing?”</p><p>“Looking through your photos for horse pics.”</p><p>“That was five years ago.”</p><p>“Found one!”</p><p>“You’re such a shit,” Loki grumbled.</p><p>Frigga had been stifling laughter to the point that tears were streaming down her cheeks. When she couldn't hold it in, she disguised it as coughing and fanned the air in front of her face as if the flour she was sifting had tickled her throat.</p><p>“You should be proud,” Thor said, sounding simultaneously sincere and amused. “You got a whole book of those pictures published.”</p><p>“They were some of the best I’ve ever taken,” Loki defended, hating how high his voice had leapt in the effort. </p><p>Thor nodded. “And this whole country is hot for horses.”</p><p>“I’m about to return your Christmas presents.”</p><p>“Oooh you got me presents?”</p><p>“I did,” Loki nodded. “And I regret it. Deeply.”</p><p>“I asked Santa if you’d been good, but when he never got back to me I assumed you’d been so bad he didn’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Thor’s playlist leapt from the soaring bounce of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” to the bedroom tantrum of Wham!s “Last Christmas” before landing in the lewd syrup of <em>The Doris Day Christmas Album</em>.</p><p>“Thor, this is filthy,” Loki scolded, through a badly smothered giggle.</p><p>“Merry Sexmas.”</p><p>Loki threw a piece of dough at him. </p><p>Thor caught it with his teeth and swallowed it before Loki could act on the urge to rush across the room and fish it out of Thor’s mouth with his fingers.</p><p>“If you get food poisoning on top of everything else, I swear to god,” Loki griped.</p><p>“Cookie dough wouldn’t do me like that,” Thor soothed. </p><p> </p><p>Loki knew Thor would steal more dough as it sat in the fridge chilling, so he herded his brother into the den again for lounging and hot cocoa. He put on <em> The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show </em> and they sat half-napping under the blankets, staring at all the beautiful people dressed in glittering clothes that cost more than cars.</p><p>“She only has the one good song,” Loki murmured. Thor heard the unspoken “but” at the end, knowing by the tone of his brother’s voice that Loki was weighing something. He hadn’t blinked once in the full minute Thor had been staring at him.</p><p>“Easy on the eyes though,” Thor smiled, and watched his brother nod--and still not blink. “And the fantasy of having a lingerie-clad Lana Del Rey as your permanent house guest is extremely relatable.”</p><p>“Mm.” Loki raised his glass to that.</p><p> </p><p>When it was nearly over, Odin peeked in at the two boneless figures sprawled on the sofa and told them, “At this rate, you’re both going to get bedsores.”</p><p>They nodded their approval of bedsores and demanded to know where he’d been. </p><p>His answer was an evasive, “Here and there.”</p><p>“What are you hiding?” Thor asked, craning his neck when their father remained behind the door frame with just his head poking around. </p><p>“Boba?” Odin tried, offering two huge cups of brown fluid that appeared, to Odin’s eyes, to have heaps of rabbit shit in them. The boys perked up. “Your mother claims you love it?”</p><p>“We do,” they confirmed, and fluttered their fingers at him to say “gimme.”</p><p>“So, it’s a drink you <em> chew</em>?”</p><p>They laughed and nodded.</p><p>“It’s better than it sounds,” Loki said. “More like a dessert that you drink.”</p><p>“Like falooda?” Odin tried.</p><p>“Pretty much,” Thor nodded.</p><p>“Well, drink fast. The turkey is in the home stretch.”</p><p> </p><p>The rustle of ice and the sweet lychee syrup made the tea taste like late summer. Loki wished he could warp the rest of the world around it for his brother’s sake. Give him a day with temperatures in the mid-eighties and skies mostly sunny. Breezy, but nothing that would throw dirt in your eye. They’d be sitting at the tiny bistro table on the cafe’s patio, watching the dogs go by and bitching about whatever movie they’d just seen. Planning a swim to the tiny uninhabited island in the middle of the lake behind Thor’s house. Skipping a real dinner afterward in favor of drinking cold beer and toasting s’mores while the sparks from their tiny campfire dissolved into the stars.</p><p>The way Thor’s visor reflected the Christmas lights had Loki thinking he was hallucinating the sparks and stars--or that he had willed them into being. But they vanished when Thor tipped his head back against the cushions and sighed.</p><p>“Let’s go swimming.”</p><p>“Pff.” Loki bumped Thor’s arm with his elbow. “Only if it’s in Mom’s bathtub.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>The holiday dinner was always eaten early--at three or four--to give everyone time to do dishes, digest, bake cookies, and have seconds. </p><p>While Frigga checked the thermometer in the turkey, Loki stuck one under his brother’s tongue. </p><p>“Good,” he nodded, on seeing the number he wanted. </p><p>“Good here too,” Frigga said.</p><p>Loki shooed Thor away from the oven and made him set the table to keep him from picking up the turkey.</p><p>“Fine, but all the forks will be wrong,” Thor warned, as he breezed off to the dining room amid the bright ringing of silver.</p><p>Loki cursed when he saw that Thor was carrying the entire flatware tray, which likely weighed as much as the turkey, if not more. </p><p>Once they were seated, Loki opened his hand over Thor’s plate and released a shower of pills. “Bon appétit.”</p><p>“Thanks. I hate it.”</p><p>They giggled and nudged each other and Odin sat smiling at their mirth while feeling, as had so often been the case since Loki came along, that he was on the outside of something looking in.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Gifts had been exchanged on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning ever since the boys had gone off to college, at which point the joys of ritual and receiving had given way to the joys of sleeping late and having an elaborate breakfast. </p><p>Thor and Loki always joined forces when it came to their parents’ gifts, splitting the cost to get one outrageous thing for each of them. This year was no different. Something gold for their mother and a bottle from Southwest France for their father. </p><p>Gift cards to B&amp;H and handwoven scarves were the standard for Loki. </p><p>Thor usually got a piece of Le Creuset in Cerise and a Wüsthof in his stocking. This year, Loki had to bring the box of cast-iron to his brother and remove it from his lap again. </p><p>Loki got Thor an Elvang Denmark alpaca blanket--which elicited a squeal so high-pitched no one could quite believe it had come from Thor’s throat--and a reusable boba straw. </p><p>“Oh my god,” Loki breathed, when he opened the box from his brother. Inside he found not one, but three Traveler’s Notebooks from the olive edition, which was no longer in production and was long out of stock. “Where?”</p><p>“EBay.”</p><p>“They never have any when I look.”</p><p>“That’s because I get them all.”</p><p>Behind the leather covers, there were enough inserts to last Loki through the year. Tucked into the bottom of the box below those were three smaller boxes--and a stainless steel boba straw. Loki found charms for each notebook within the little boxes. The first was a circular gold pendant with a pearl in its center and the cycles of the moon in relief around its edge. The second was an antique gold locket with the initials LB engraved in it in elegant script. The edges of the letters had been softened by the brush of someone’s throat.</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“Went antiquing with Mom in August. Couldn’t believe it. Had to ask her if I was reading it wrong or if it actually did have your initials on it.”</p><p>“Unreal.”</p><p>The third was a gold ouroboros ring with turquoise eyes. </p><p>“This is beyond a splurge,” Loki said, and sat gaping at his brother.</p><p>“Remember that when I give you socks next year,” Thor smiled.</p><p>“You can give me socks for the rest of my life.”</p><p> </p><p>Thor was asking if he could make coffee when Odin said, “One more thing,” and pulled a small package from behind the couch cushion.</p><p>Thor nodded before he’d unwrapped it, recognizing it already, while Loki sat wrinkling his nose until Thor had peeled back the red foil paper.</p><p>A new phone. The same model Hela had shot. </p><p>“Bulletproof vest,” Thor smiled. </p><p>The phone had a tiny bag taped to its front. It appeared, to Loki’s heavily watering eyes, to contain a Chiclet.</p><p>“The detective was nice enough to take your SIM card out of evidence and have it copied for me.”</p><p>“Oh, perfect. Thank you.”</p><p> </p><p>Everything was perfect. And everything could have easily been evidence. All their gifts could have been sitting under the tree, collecting dust behind yellow crime scene tape until the investigation concluded and their extended family came to deal with the estate. Loki wondered if Freyr and Eir would have opened the presents and donated them or just thrown them away, too sick of sad sights to subject themselves to more. He saw the cemetery digging a row of four graves in frozen ground, dirtying white snow, and his brother’s soft name carved in black stone. </p><p> </p><p>He was startled back into the living room by the sound of his own sobbing. And then Thor was there, scooping him up to sit sideways across his lap, rocking him and telling him to breathe.</p><p>“No lifting,” Loki scolded, gasping and stuttering through the words, shaking his head <em> no </em> against Thor’s shoulder.</p><p>“You’re so tense you’re nearly weightless. It’s like playing Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.”</p><p> </p><p>When Loki’s chest had stopped heaving, Thor guided him back to their parents’ room. Loki thought Thor had stowed a second batch of gifts they were going to retrieve, but Thor kept herding him along until they were in the soothing white haze of the bathroom, with its rose-toned light bulbs and stacks of fluffy towels. </p><p>Thor turned on the heat lamp and did a squat--which Loki couldn’t disapprove of because it kept Thor’s head above his heart--to turn on the faucet.</p><p>“Achy?” Loki asked.</p><p>Thor huffed a laugh and shook his head. His visor was steaming up. He set it aside on the vanity and rubbed his temples and forehead where the band had left red dents.</p><p>Loki was leaning against the wall, holding his belly and biting his lip. His face was still blotchy and his breaths were fast and shallow. </p><p>“When’s the last time you had a bath?” Thor asked. He set Loki’s arms at his sides and started unbuttoning his cardigan. Loki dipped his chin and watched his brother’s hands.</p><p>“Had a bath as in <em> bathed</em>, or as in <em> soaked in a tub</em>?”</p><p>“How about both,” Thor said. He slid the sweater off Loki’s shoulders and tossed it onto the chair, then started on Loki’s button-up.</p><p>“Bathed,” Loki went still with his mouth open, then frowned. “What day is it?”</p><p>“The twenty-sixth.”</p><p>“Damn. Not since the evening of the twenty-second then.”</p><p>“Tub?” Thor nudged.</p><p>“Not since I was little. Grade school, probably.”</p><p>Thor pulled Loki’s t-shirt over his head and then Loki waved Thor off and dealt with his socks and bottoms himself, not because he wanted to, but to keep Thor from bending over.</p><p> </p><p>To Loki’s relief, Thor had drawn a cooler bath for him than the near-boiling one he’d taken himself. It was still hot enough to cut every strand of tension in Loki’s skin. He moaned deep and low when he got in, sounding almost as if he'd been hit.</p><p>“You okay?” Thor asked.</p><p>Loki nodded and leaned back against the tub, then slid down until he was in up to his nose.</p><p>Thor added rose water to the bath and stirred it with his fingers. July leapt up in Loki’s mind, with its sun that was bright red even behind shut eyes and its warmth that left you loose-limbed after a night spent curled in sleep. </p><p>He sank under and surfaced with a pleased sigh. </p><p>“Keep your eyes closed a second,” Thor said, and patted Loki’s face dry with a towel. “Are you using shampoo these days?” </p><p>“I have to,” Loki said, with defeat in his voice. “I tried going without, since it’s supposed to be great for curls, but I just looked like a greaseball. Smelled like one, too.”</p><p>“You get that from Dad,” Thor said. </p><p>Loki waited. </p><p>Thor filled his palm with shampoo and started lathering Loki’s scalp. </p><p>“Thor.”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>Loki started laughing. “It couldn’t be from Dad.”</p><p>“Well it’s not from Mom. She can go months without shampooing. She only uses it because she likes the perf-- Fuck,” Thor’s fingers stilled. He groaned and sagged. “I did it again.”</p><p>Loki couldn’t stop giggling. It soon spread to Thor’s lungs. Their breaths got shorter and shorter until they were both wheezing.</p><p>That they were not related was a fact Thor’s mind refused to retain, for which failing Loki only loved his brother more.</p><p>“Sorry,” Thor said, and squeezed Loki’s shoulders, leaving sudsy prints of his hands behind to wilt and fizz.</p><p>“It’s all right,” Loki soothed, and started laughing again before he settled with a sigh. “It’s adorable.” </p><p>Thor leaned around to peck a kiss on Loki’s cheek and whisper, “Thank you.”</p><p>“How’s your chest?”</p><p>“Still has a huge knot in it, but it doesn’t bother me unless I bump it into something.”</p><p>“Head?”</p><p>“Not as bad as last night.”</p><p>“But not good.”</p><p>“Not good,” Thor admitted. “But not bad enough to keep me up. I think it’s mostly the pressure wrap, crushing a swollen bruise all day.”</p><p>“Right,” Loki nodded. “Shit.”</p><p>“Yep,” Thor chirped, then soaped his hands and returned the favor of the slippery neck rub Loki had given him the day before. “Let’s move to Japan. Live in the hot springs with the macaques.”</p><p>“I don’t think they’d have us.”</p><p>“Japan, or the macaques?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Thor snorted. “Probably not.”</p><p>“I was thinking Scotland,” Loki murmured.</p><p>“Mm. Nessie would have us.”</p><p>“And it’s so pretty. And far from the equator.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>When the water had cooled, Loki rose and Thor grabbed the silly plastic cup that was still sitting on the window sill. </p><p>Loki had intended to drip his way across the bathroom and rinse himself off in the shower, but he held his tongue and let Thor pour water over him, guiding it across his skin with the edge of his hand, brushing suds away with his fingers and turning Loki this way and that with gentle pressure from warm palms.</p><p>Loki took Thor’s offered arm to step out of the tub and Thor hugged a towel around him, wrapping him up and patting him dry. Loki could only hook his chin over Thor’s shoulder to return the embrace.</p><p>“Doesn’t this hurt your chest?”</p><p>“Eh,” Thor shrugged. He stroked Loki’s spine and squeezed him and pressed a long kiss to the curve of his neck. “Want me to bring your pajamas?”</p><p>“Please,” Loki nodded.<br/><br/></p><p> </p><p>They joined their mother in the kitchen to help with cookies, which involved conducting lots of unnecessary taste tests. </p><p>“Which ones should I make more of?” she asked, rolling out a smooth sheet of dough. There was still a little space on the baking sheet beside the reindeer, snowflakes, mittens, and Christmas trees. </p><p>Thor picked through the cutters and chose two shapes. “Stars for me… and horses for Loki.” </p><p>“Fucker,” Loki huffed, as he grinned around a mouthful of gingerbread. </p><p> </p><p>When the baking was done, the brothers split the dishes, with Loki washing and Thor drying. Another of Thor’s Christmas playlists drifted from the tiny speakers of Loki’s phone. </p><p>Normally, Thor would have been singing along, inventing or altering the verses in increasingly adolescent ways. But he was silent. The only sound he made was a soft grunt when Loki handed him a skillet. </p><p>“Too heavy?” Loki asked.</p><p>“It’s fine.”</p><p>Loki watched Thor from the corner of his eye. His features had fallen. Gone slack in a way Loki hadn’t seen before. If Loki had met that face in another context, he wouldn’t have recognized his brother.  </p><p>It was the small cast iron skillet, and they’d made shortbread in it. The shortbread was a holiday standard. Their grandfather’s recipe. He’d been dead for decades now, so Loki doubted that was what had dampened Thor’s spirits. They’d only made half the recipe, but Loki also doubted Thor would be crushed by having slightly fewer Christmas cookies at his age. </p><p>He handed Thor a dripping measuring cup and Thor wandered toward its home in the cupboard, drying it as he went.</p><p>Loki looked at the pie-shaped slices of shortbread that were sitting on the cooling rack, sparkling with sanding sugar. They’d halved the recipe to fit the smaller cast iron skillet. The larger skillet was unavailable, sitting in evidence at the police department because Thor had brained their unspeakably shitty sister with it. Loki didn’t know if the cops returned things held in evidence once cases concluded or not. But now everything in the house was likely looking like potential evidence to Thor.</p><p> </p><p>When they were done washing up, Thor took his pills and went upstairs without a word. </p><p>Loki started to follow, stopped himself, then rushed up the steps.</p><p>He found Thor in their old room with his fingertip pressed to the nose of one of the diecast jets that were still suspended from the ceiling by fishing line. </p><p>The brothers had never fully moved out, and year after year, to their relief, they found their mother hadn’t fully evicted them. There were lingering hints of teenage boys scattered through the space. Pictures of actors, athletes, and singers that had been printed out were still collaged onto a cork board. They curled and faded from one year to the next, but were never less sexy. Postcards promoting movies, picked up in the art theater’s lobby, were still wedged between the mirror and its frame. Thor’s lacrosse stick was still propped up in the corner, with its net made of spider silk as much as nylon now.</p><p>It had been so long since Loki had been the boy who lived in this room, its contents now felt like they belonged to a stranger. The t-shirts bought at concert merch tables were still hanging in the closet with the black leather jacket that had most often been worn over them, souvenirs from those days when he had spent every waking moment worrying about whether or not his hair, clothes, and hobbies told the right lies to strangers. </p><p>The mattress he had so often abandoned had been abandoned again. Back then, he’d left it to go walking on nights that brought warm rain or fog or moonlight, in the hope that, by some witchcraft, their beauty would imprint itself on him, and the right eye would see it in his skin. Thor had never asked where he’d gone on those nights, but had always been awake when he’d returned, lying in the dark, whispering “Everything all right?” Now the bed was a victim of geography. Too far from Thor’s warm breathing. The posters of impossibly obscure bands, the yearbooks piled on the shelves, and the plush carpet underfoot all swallowed the soft sounds that were the only thing Loki wanted from this place.</p><p> </p><p>“Everything all right?” Loki whispered.</p><p>Thor shook his head. His hair was still flat at the back from all their napping. </p><p>“What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Everything,” Thor said, and huffed a tiny laugh. “I can’t kill her. I don’t want them to have to bury a child. And I know she’s not wired right. But, if she’s alive, she can come back.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“And, it’s so stupid, but I keep-” Thor’s voice went tight and he gave himself an impatient sigh that sent Loki’s arms around his waist. Thor covered Loki’s hands with his own and gave them a gentle squeeze. “I keep thinking I’ll be able to see again once I get this stupid diaper off my face,” Thor confessed. “Like it’s only the bandage that’s keeping me blind.”</p><p>Loki nodded. “If it’s any consolation, I keep thinking you need lots of rest and protein because you’re regrowing an eye.”</p><p>Thor burst out laughing and slowly turned around. “Like an axolotl?”</p><p>Loki nodded and grinned. His smile wrung tears from his eyes. </p><p>Thor dried them with his sleeve and Loki let his head sag until it was resting against his brother’s. “Tired?” Thor asked.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Should we put on a sad movie and cry ourselves to sleep?”</p><p>Loki started to laugh, then froze. “Oh, fuck me, you can’t cry." He gaped, shocked to find another of their sister’s victims here. </p><p>Thor was faintly smiling, waiting for the rest. “Why not?”</p><p>“The bandage will come loose."</p><p>“Shit.”</p><p>“Next week, we’ll watch <em> E. T. </em> and <em> Moulin Rouge </em> and <em> The Constant Gardener</em>. Meet our quota of gross sobbing for this century.”</p><p>“Scar ourselves for life,” Thor said, and let a low chuckle puff out against Loki’s lips. “On second thought, I’ll skip the sob-fest. I just want to watch <em> Mon Oncle </em> and <em> Playtime </em> and <em> My Neighbor Totoro. </em> Maybe <em> The Lord of the Rings.</em>”</p><p>“Mmm. That would be nice. And we really would get bedsores.”</p><p>“Should we sleep on the couch again tonight?”</p><p>“Do you mind?” Loki asked.</p><p>“No, I like it better down there. I don’t feel so boxed in.” </p><p> </p><p>They put on <em> Stand By Me</em> because they knew it by heart. Thor fell asleep almost instantly. Loki sat up through the whole thing with tears silently streaming down his cheeks, seeing far too much of Chris in his brother.</p><p>When he shut off the TV and curled up to rest, the soft brush of Thor’s breath cooled his face and drove the thoughts from his head, mercifully granting him sleep. </p><p> </p><p>Again Loki woke with Thor’s arm belting his waist and Thor’s lips on his neck, and again came the little nudge of Thor’s morning erection against the base of his ass. He had to bite his lips to keep from laughing.</p><p> </p><p>“How long have you been thinking of Scotland?” Thor asked, as he stretched himself to life half an hour later. </p><p>Loki hummed and rolled over. “However long <em> Outlander </em> has been on.”</p><p>“I thought you hated <em>Outlander</em>,” Thor said, and gently prodded Loki’s side with one finger.</p><p>“I do. Gabaldon is infuriating. When she wants to inject some drama into the story, she spins a wheel. The entire circumference of that wheel says ‘rape.’ But Balfe and Heughan are delicious. Their chemistry is insane. So I have a greatest hits edit.”</p><p>“All the landscape shots and castles?” Thor asked. His tone was the high, feigned innocence that functioned as accusation.</p><p>Loki reddened.</p><p>“Hmmm,” Thor dug his fingers into Loki’s ribs. “Fleshscapes?” Thor tried.</p><p>Loki’s eyes began to water and the color in his cheeks deepened.</p><p>“The Smut Cut.”</p><p>“More or less,” Loki mumbled.</p><p>“Well, don’t be a tease. Play it,” Thor said, spurring his brother on with his knees until Loki grinned and grabbed his laptop. </p><p>Thor hummed and leaned against Loki’s shoulder for a better view of the screen.</p><p> </p><p>By the end of it, both of the brothers had tented the fronts of their pajama bottoms.</p><p>Thor fanned his face coquettishly. “Well, she’s like cream and sugar with a splash of coffee.”</p><p>“I know. And he’s…” Loki trailed off and shook his head.</p><p>“He’s what?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Loki shrugged. “Beautiful, obviously... but also one of the only men on the planet who can pull off the whole ultra-macho, masculine stereotypes without making them feel grotesque. Like you, I guess. He doesn’t seem to take it seriously. Keeps the oppressive qualities out of it.”</p><p> </p><p>They tiptoed out to the kitchen to sneak cookies for breakfast before their parents woke up, only starting the coffee maker when they’d had their fill of sweets. </p><p>“It’s the twenty-seventh,” Loki said.</p><p>Thor nodded when he heard the hint of question in it.</p><p>“Were you still thinking of heading out today?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Thor sighed. “It would be nice to sleep in my own bed. Do you need to get going?”</p><p>“No, I can be here or there.”</p><p>Thor smiled. “I’ll see how Mom feels.”</p><p> </p><p>Frigga said she wanted to keep Thor and Loki in a sling around her neck for the rest of her life, but she always wanted that, and that a trip home and return to some semblance of normalcy seemed wise after so many upheavals.</p><p> </p><p>After a long, elaborate breakfast, the brothers packed up their things and Loki loaded them into Thor’s car. They kissed their parents goodbye and hugged them longer and tighter than they ever had before. It left their arms feeling doubly empty afterward.</p><p> </p><p>Thor wanted to install more mirrors and get some practice before he tried driving on major roads, so Loki took the wheel. The drive wasn’t long, merely fast, almost entirely highway. Even as a passenger, Thor was unnerved by seeing only half the traffic. <br/><br/></p><p> </p><p>“I can take a Lyft home if you feel like you need to be alone,” Loki offered, once he’d unpacked Thor’s things and watered Thor’s Christmas tree. He was standing barefoot in the bedroom doorway, looking at the floor, still wearing a sweater he’d borrowed from Thor that morning.</p><p>“Would I be keeping you from anything if I asked you to stay?” </p><p>“No,” Loki said, shaking his head before the word had left his mouth. Thor’s eye was smiling at him when he met it. “I’d rather not leave you alone just yet, actually,” Loki murmured. “And you’ll need a ride to your appointment to get the bandage off.”</p><p>Thor hummed and nodded at him. </p><p> </p><p>They went grocery shopping for fresh produce. Thor had made a point to eat all he had before he’d left for the holiday. Loki watched the other shoppers as they stared at his brother. He wanted to take them by the shoulders and shake them, knowing they saw the bandaged eye as some sort of failing when in truth it was a triumph. </p><p> </p><p>After a saintly dinner composed solely of whole foods, they indulged in the candy bars and ice cream Loki had snuck into their shopping cart. </p><p>To digest, they stretched out on the couch and Thor put a movie on. He groaned as his phone began to ring, then swore when he looked at the screen.</p><p>Loki glanced over and saw Jane’s name. “She’s probably seen the news by now. I’m sure she’s worried.”</p><p>“I know,” Thor sighed. “I just can’t right now.”</p><p>“Want me to take it?”</p><p>Thor nodded and Loki answered the call. He didn’t leave the room. Instead, he wrapped his arm around Thor’s shoulders and played with Thor’s hair while he sang his brother’s praises into Jane’s ear. Thor got all the pleasure of eavesdropping with none of the guilt, and Loki got to bare his soul obliquely, with the cover of easing Jane’s mind.</p><p> </p><p>By the time Loki said goodbye, Thor was tucked under his arm, clinging to his side. It left Loki feeling more like a man than anything else ever had.</p><p>“Thank you,” Thor whispered. </p><p>“You’re welcome,” Loki said, and kissed the top of his brother’s head.</p><p>“Do you have another greatest hits edit?”</p><p>“No,” Loki lamented. “Five seasons, and that was every scene worth seeing.”</p><p>“Damn.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Found any actual porn worth watching?” Thor tried.</p><p>“God no. That’s such a lost cause I’ve stopped looking.”</p><p>“Why can’t we have nice things?”</p><p>“I don't know,” Loki laughed. “I know the advice is always that you should make the content you want to see in the world, but I think film is a little out of reach.”</p><p>“Mm,” Thor nodded. “Requires collaboration. But photos don’t cut it when it comes to porn.”</p><p>“They do not,” Loki agreed. “Which reminds me: can I take a few shots of your bruise?”</p><p> </p><p>Thor unbuttoned his shirt. Loki adjusted the lights and took fifteen photos in as many seconds. </p><p>“I swear it looks worse every day,” Thor griped. </p><p>“It does, but bruises always do. How’s your head?”</p><p>“Better.”</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>“And I’ve stopped the codeine.”</p><p>Loki looked up. “Stopped because you don’t need it, or stopped because I’ve been....”</p><p>“Fretting?” Thor finished, and Loki nodded. “Stopped because you were fretting,” Thor admitted, and Loki closed his eyes and opened his mouth to object. “Stayed off because the Tylenol is enough now.”</p><p>“You promise?”</p><p>“I do,” Thor nodded.</p><p>Loki let out a shaky breath and buttoned his brother’s shirt back up. “Don’t be afraid to take it again if you need it.”</p><p>“I know.” Thor bit his lip. “Do you think I need a bath?”</p><p>“You smell fine, if that’s what you’re asking, but wouldn’t you like to soak?”</p><p>“I think I’ll turn up the thermostat and try a heating pad instead.”</p><p>“Tired?”</p><p>“Very,” Thor confessed. </p><p>“It’ll be good to sleep in your own bed.”</p><p>Thor frowned. “What about you?”</p><p>“What about me?”</p><p>“Aren’t you exhausted and sick of strange beds?”</p><p>“I am tired,” Loki said, with a tiny shrug, “but…”</p><p>“But,” Thor said, and nudged his brother’s toe with his own.</p><p>Loki only shook his head.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When Thor got back from brushing his teeth, he found the heating pad under the blankets, warming his place. He slid in and moved it onto his feet just as Loki returned with the thermometer.</p><p>Thor opened his mouth unbidden and Loki put it under his tongue until it beeped.</p><p>“Still good,” Loki approved, and tucked the blankets under Thor’s chin.</p><p>“What are you going to do?” Thor asked.</p><p>“I have half a dozen half-finished books on my phone. I’ll probably read one of those.”</p><p>“Don’t forget to sleep,” said.</p><p>Loki nodded and squeezed Thor’s ankle before he turned out the light and disappeared down the hall.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>A floating patch of light near the floor was all Thor could see when he woke. His sleepy mind thought first of will-o’-the-wisp and then of a hole in the wall until his eyes adjusted and he found his brother’s face, glowing blue in the light from his phone as he sat cross-legged on the floor, reading.</p><p>“Lo?”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Come up here where it’s soft.”</p><p>“Won’t my screen be too bright?”</p><p>“I can fall asleep in the sun.”</p><p>Loki heard Thor thumping the mattress with his palm. He climbed in and set his phone on the nightstand.</p><p>“You can keep reading.”</p><p>“I’ll wait until you’re asleep again.”</p><p>“Here, stretch out on your belly for a minute,” Thor said. When Loki had done so, he set the heating pad on Loki’s butt and turned it back on. “There,” Thor rubbed each cheek in a wide circle. “Stop being so mean to your tocks.”</p><p>“No. Little bastards give me no end of shit,” Loki said, and Thor groaned and kicked him and laughed despite himself. A moment later, Thor slid his hand under Loki’s t-shirt and gave a long, slow stroke to his spine with broad, even pressure from his palm.</p><p>“Is this a back rub?” Loki whispered, then scrambled out of his shirt when Thor said yes.</p><p> </p><p>Thor kneaded tight muscles until they were as soft as dough and Loki was puffing slow, sleepy breaths onto the pillow. When Thor was certain Loki was well under, he pulled the quilt up over his brother and tucked him in.</p><p> </p><p>Loki was smiling in his sleep when Thor woke. He checked the time on his phone and sent a quick text to their parents to let them know all was well.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s so funny,” Loki asked, when he woke and found Thor grinning with all his teeth.</p><p>“It must be contagious.”</p><p>“What must?”</p><p>“Smiling.”</p><p>“Am I?”</p><p>“You have been since I woke up.”</p><p>“And when was that?”</p><p>“Ten minutes ago,” Thor shrugged.</p><p>“And what was ten minutes ago?” Loki yawned.</p><p>“One o’clock.”</p><p>“You’re kidding.”</p><p>Thor held up his phone and Loki’s eyebrows went up.</p><p>“You needed it,” Thor soothed, and reached to scratch light circles up and down Loki’s spine.</p><p>“Your back rubs are a national treasure,” Loki sighed, and Thor hummed. “I’ve dumped no less than three boyfriends because they fell asleep while they were rubbing my back.”</p><p>“Red flag,” Thor nodded.</p><p>“It <em> is</em>. Especially since-” Loki started laughing and shook his head, “they were all coming off such easy days. You were usually fresh out of the shower after lacrosse practice when you did it. I’d wreck myself hunching over my books and then you’d knead me back into shape for over an hour. You should have been eating a three thousand calorie dinner and going to sleep.” Loki started laughing again. “And now you’re fresh out of the hospital and still mopping the floor with a bunch of fuckboys who have the gall to call themselves men.”</p><p>Thor snorted and Loki dissolved into a fit of giggles that swiftly evolved into sobbing. </p><p>Thor draped an arm and a leg over his brother and rested that way until the last of the tension left Loki’s body in a long, wavering breath.</p><p>“I feel like a toddler who needs a nap,” Loki said. His voice was thick and his breath was still stuttering. His face, already puffy from sleep, had swollen further and gone pink with weeping.</p><p>“You just had a thirteen hour nap. Now you finally have the energy to react to all the shit you’ve just been through.”</p><p>“And the space,” Loki added. “I didn’t realize how nervous it was making me to stay in that house.” </p><p>“Scene of the crime," Thor nodded. “You’ve been wound pretty tight.” He resumed his slow passes up and down his brother’s back. “And somehow…” Thor shook his head and kissed Loki’s shoulder.</p><p>“Somehow <em> what</em>,” Loki whispered, and rocked his weight forward to shove Thor lightly.</p><p>“Somehow you’ve never been softer.” Thor smiled and brushed his fingers through the chaos of Loki’s curls while more tears slid sideways across Loki’s face.</p><p>Loki let himself rest until Thor was finished fixing his hair. “How’s your eye?”</p><p>“Good,” Thor said. “It’s just the bandage making me itch now… and it smells like... <em> face</em>.”</p><p>“It does smell like face,” Loki laughed, bright and untroubled, as if the passing clouds had never come.  </p><p>“How’s your butt?” Thor asked.</p><p>“Feels like it got spanked by an anvil.”</p><p>“You’ll have to stay off it today.”</p><p>“I hope you don’t mean by taking long walks in the cold.”</p><p>“You can just stay like this,” Thor laughed. He dug the heating pad out from where it had been lost in the blankets and centered it over Loki’s ass again.</p><p>Loki grunted his approval and nodded off during another of Thor’s sublime massages.</p><p> </p><p>“Is there an afternoon equivalent of brunch?” Thor asked, when Loki’s eyes slitted open and started blinking at him. “Linner? Dunch?”</p><p>“Tea,” Loki offered.</p><p>Thor hummed.</p><p> </p><p>They had fruit salad and cold sandwiches while standing at the counter, then curled up on the couch with tea that was mainly milk and sugar. </p><p>When he was done drinking, Loki settled on his side with his head in Thor’s lap. Thor finger-combed his hair while they watched <em>Night at the Museum.</em></p><p> </p><p>After a bath for Thor and a shower for Loki, Loki took more photos of Thor’s bruise. Yellow was creeping in around its edges. It would soon turn the corner from ripe to rotten. When he was satisfied with the results, they called their mother, who was pleased to learn they were still together--and amused by Thor’s complaint that his face had an overly “face-y” odor.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>“Would you be bothered if I got ink all over your sheets?” Loki asked.</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>Loki stretched out on his belly in Thor’s bed and propped himself up on his elbows as he filled in all the journal entries he had missed since the twenty-fourth. Thor sat up against the headboard beside him and read a battered old paperback.</p><p>An hour later, Loki sighed.</p><p>“What’s up?”</p><p>“It all looks like nothing on paper. Just a list.” </p><p>“Recipe for disaster,” Thor nodded.</p><p>“That’s Hela in a fucking nutshell.”</p><p>“All the soldiers reading back through their wartime diary entries found them inadequate too. Had to fictionalize everything to get it right. You’ll have to start drafting a novel.”</p><p>“I don’t want any more war stories,” Loki said.</p><p>“What would you prefer?”</p><p>“Back rubs,” Loki decided, biting back a smile.</p><p>“As novelizations?” Thor teased.</p><p>Loki narrowed his eyes and maintained his false glare until Thor reached over and tugged his shirt up to commence rubbing.</p><p>Loki sighed. “If someone could write this, it’s all anyone would read.”</p><p>“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Thor murmured.</p><p>He kneaded Loki’s shoulders until the tension had left them, then focused on the long muscles that flanked the spine, slowly following them from the armpits down to the base of the back.   </p><p>Thor tugged lightly on the waistband of Loki’s sweatpants. “Here, gimme your butt.”</p><p>“Buy me dinner first,” Loki said, and they collapsed into wheezing laughter and playful shoving that faded into giggles and sighs. Loki shimmied his bottoms down and Thor swung a leg over to sit on the backs of Loki’s thighs while he rubbed the achy mounds of Loki’s glutes and Loki slowly melted into the mattress.</p><p>“Poor little tuchus,” Thor said, lightly patting the cheeks in farewell before he sank down beside his brother.</p><p>Loki lifted his hips and set them down again with a groan.</p><p>“Did you just adjust a boner?”</p><p>“Yes, fuck you very much,” Loki griped, but there was laughter in his breast. “You try getting an ass-massage from the latest avatar of Zeus. See how your dick does.”</p><p>“Check it out, Ganymede,” Thor said, and dipped his chin toward his hips. </p><p>Loki craned his neck and started cackling when he saw the flannel tent his brother had raised. “Nice.” Loki collapsed again and then stiffened and cursed a moment later.</p><p>“What is it?” Thor whispered.</p><p>“The doctor said no sexual activity. The strain-”</p><p>“Lo, we get erections in our sleep,” Thor soothed, and all the breath left Loki’s body in a rush.</p><p>“Right. Sorry. This is all so…”</p><p>“Terrifying?” Thor tried.</p><p>Loki nodded.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>They passed the days with baking, reading, and watching movies on the couch. </p><p>After a snowstorm came through, Thor wanted to take a nighttime walk around the neighborhood to see the Christmas lights before people stopped plugging them in. </p><p>The world looked like a child’s gingerbread house: every surface was covered in frosting and sprinkled with sugar. </p><p>“The stars are the heaven of diamonds in the song, aren’t they?” Thor asked, and Loki had to sift through his memories to frame the question. </p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“In my head it’s always the snow, just like this.”</p><p>Under the streetlights, the crystalline flakes flashed like the facets of gems in a way the stars never could. Loki walked smiling, arm in arm with a man who could steal the magic from the sky and scatter it over the Earth.</p><p> </p><p>When they got back, they were chilly and peckish, poking through the cupboards without seeing what they wanted.</p><p>“Nervous about tomorrow?” Loki asked. Thor was not normally one to struggle with what to eat.</p><p>“Yeah. I have no idea what to expect. I’ve been googling photos and a lot of them look okay, but,” he shook his head. “I’d rather have my fucking eye.”</p><p>“Do you know what happened to it?” Loki asked.</p><p>“Our sister stabbed it?”</p><p>Loki elbowed him. “No, I mean do you know what they did with it? At the hospital? I didn’t even think to ask if they could keep it for you.” </p><p>“So we could take it home and put it in a little soap box and bury it in the backyard?” Thor asked.</p><p>“Maybe.” Loki lowered his eyes and went slightly pink. </p><p>Thor pulled his lips between his teeth to try to stem the flow of his grin, but his amusement redirected through his lungs and shook his breast.</p><p>“Shut up.” Loki flashed a Kermit-frown and pinched him weakly, but Thor could see the smile stealing over his brother’s features. </p><p>“Rest in pieces,” Thor said, and they both snorted and leaned against the counter to brace their laughter.</p><p> </p><p>Thor began round two of rifling through the kitchen in the quest for suitable snacks. He was whistling a tune that Loki recognized. A moment later, he started singing.</p><p>“Face without an ah-eye, bring me apple pie-ie, for my faaaaace without an ah-eye.”</p><p>“That is not a song,” Loki sputtered.</p><p>“Yes it is. I just made it one.”</p><p>“Billy Idol and his attorneys would disagree.”</p><p>“They can’t touch me. It’s a parody. If Weird Al can get away with it, so can I.”</p><p>“You’re weirder than Al.”</p><p>“True,” Thor agreed.</p><p>“Do you actually want apple pie, or was that just the first rhyme you could come up with?</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Loki rolled his eyes.</p><p>“I need it,” Thor said, “for my faaaaaace without an ah-eye.”</p><p>“It feels like I’d be rewarding bad behavior,” Loki sighed, but he was gathering the ingredients anyway. “Do you have any more apples?”</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“Then I can only make half a pie. More of a galette.”</p><p>“For my-”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Faaaaace without an ah-eye.”</p><p>“I’m going to eat it all myself if you don’t stop singing.”</p><p>“No you won’t. If you try, I’ll play one of my pity-cards.”</p><p>“How many of those do you suppose you have?” Loki asked, raising an eyebrow while he peeled an apple.</p><p>Thor hummed and tipped his head from side to side, weighing it. “I feel like an eye has to be worth at least five.”</p><p>“I think you’re selling yourself short.”</p><p>“Am I more pitiful than that?”</p><p>“Much,” Loki nodded, and Thor dug his fingers into Loki’s ribs and bit his hair before cartoonishly spitting it out with a stream of <em> pth pth pth </em> sounds.</p><p> </p><p>Thor’s arms were forever darting in front of Loki as he worked, adding a dash of this and a pinch of that. The dessert was delicious. Loki had done enough of the work to feel some sense of accomplishment, but he knew the flavor was owed entirely to the assistance of someone who had actually studied food. The slices they had intended to save for tomorrow’s tea were gone within an hour.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>It felt strange to set their alarms, and even stranger to wake up to them. </p><p> </p><p>Thor was silent on the drive to the hospital. Every time Loki stole a glance at him, he was staring at the empty fields that lined the highway with his arms crossed in front of his breast. </p><p> </p><p>Loki had, for no good reason, pictured himself being present for the removal of the bandages, but he was stuck in the waiting room with last season’s magazines.</p><p> </p><p>When Thor came out, he shrugged. The stitches were still holding his eyelids shut to limit their movement and keep the conformer in place. The skin was shiny and pink, overly taut, with fading bruises all around it. But the swelling seemed minor for such a frightening injury. Loki found the visor to be the most jarring thing, making it seem as if Thor had wandered in from a wood shop.</p><p> </p><p>Loki got the practical details from Thor on the drive back. Pink discharge was to be expected. Once the sutures dissolved and the lids could open, eye drops were to be applied. His temperature should still be taken. No exercise beyond walking. No lifting more than ten pounds. No bending for another week. No swimming or submerging his eye, but showers were now allowed--Thor pumped his fists in the air at this bit of progress. And sex was okay, with some asterisks.</p><p>“What asterisks?” Loki asked, then shut his mouth with a click of teeth.</p><p>“Can’t lift my partner. Partner can’t put any pressure on my upper body. Can’t let my pulse get too high.”</p><p>“What about glasses?”</p><p>“He said I need polycarbonate lenses.”</p><p>“Good. Do you want to go look for some now?”</p><p>Thor sighed. “Might as well get it over with.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki helped his brother pick flattering frames and the shop placed the order, which wouldn’t be in for a week with the holiday. </p><p> </p><p>On the way home, Loki made an unplanned turn into a hardware store. </p><p>“What are we building?” Thor asked.</p><p>“We’re not. They’ll have protective lenses so you won’t have to wear that visor.”</p><p>“Ooooh,” Thor purred, and squeezed Loki’s knee. “Plus now we're right next door to my favorite Thai place.” </p><p> </p><p>When they were back in Thor’s kitchen, Loki took a flurry of photos of his smiling sibling slurping red curry and sent them to their mother. She asked for the doctor’s name so that she could send him a thank you note.</p><p> </p><p>Thor looked like he might burst at the seams with pleasure when he stood and announced he was going to take a shower. Loki rose to follow, remembered himself, and sat back down. </p><p>“I was going to leave the door open, if that’s okay. In case I need to call for help,” Thor said. </p><p>Loki nodded. He wiped the sweat from his palms on his thighs and did the dishes with shaking hands.</p><p> </p><p>Thor came out dressed in a towel that was slowly sliding off and a thousand drops of perfumed water. He’d shaved, which in addition to his face and neck, included the half dozen hairs on his chest and the scant tufts under his arms.</p><p>“I can’t smell my face,” Thor said, coming to rest just inches from his brother. Loki could feel the heat from Thor’s skin, which was still rosy from the scalding shower. “I mean, physically, I have no way to reach it. Is the face-y smell gone?”</p><p>Loki laughed and leaned over to sniff Thor’s cheek. </p><p>“All gone,” Loki approved. </p><p>“Did you have any New Year's Eve plans?” Thor asked.</p><p>“No. You?”</p><p>“I was supposed to go out for drinks with Sif and the usual suspects, but I already texted them about the whole Hela situation. And I’m not allowed to drink while I’m taking Tylenol anyway.”</p><p>“You could still get together and <em> not </em> drink,” Loki said. “I’ll drive everyone if they want to get drunk.”</p><p>Thor smiled and squeezed Loki’s shoulder. “I’d rather keep relaxing.”</p><p>“We could have a laid back celebration.” This won Loki another squeeze, this time to the back of the neck, with warm fingertips trailing down to the side afterward. “I’ll pick the refreshments, you pick the activities.”</p><p>Loki had learned the hard way over the years that if Thor was left in charge of food and drink, there was a high probability that kale would make an appearance, and no one wanted that.</p><p> </p><p>Loki came back from a trip to the grocery store laden with sacks full of trashy snacks and the ingredients for fizzy punch.</p><p>Thor wandered over and started poking through the bags, oohing and aahing at all the perfectly terrible choices his brother had made. He found Cheetos and Funyuns, barbecue potato chips, Bugles, and honey mustard pretzels.</p><p>“I feel like we’re about to shatter the world record for sodium intake.”</p><p>“And bad breath,” Loki nodded. </p><p>“Oh good, I was hoping you got something sweet,” Thor said, pulling a Cracker Jack box out of the last bag. “And it still comes with a prize.” </p><p>“You can have it.”</p><p>“Excellent. Oooh, and Doritos. I’ll get chopsticks so we can keep our hands clean.”</p><p>“What did you come up with?” Loki asked, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips in teasing expectation.</p><p>Thor did a slow, dramatic spread of his arm, gesturing at the top of the dining table. It was covered in markers, pencils, rulers, scissors, glue sticks, and stacks of old magazines.</p><p>“I thought we could work on journal spreads.”</p><p>“I didn’t know you kept a journal.”</p><p>“I don’t yet. It’s one of my resolutions.”</p><p> </p><p>They spent the evening beavering away at their notebooks, listening to Still Corners’ album <em> Strange Pleasures, </em> and crunching their way through the snacks. </p><p>The music was one of the few habits that had held fast past adolescence. Thor had always liked songs that were sad, slow, and spacey. Loki too. And Loki still loved to be the first to find something that fit the bill, beating his brother to the discovery and then delighting him with the revelation. He lived to hear Thor hum and ask “Who’s this?” as they were listening to records on road trips to family gatherings. It sent a thrill from his chin to his toes.</p><p>“This punch is better than booze,” Thor groaned. He drained his glass, tapping its bottom to knock a melting blob of sherbet into his mouth, then rose to refill both of their cups.</p><p>“Mm. No bitterness or burn. And it won’t make you throw up if you drink too much of it.”</p><p>“That means there’s no such thing as too much.” </p><p>“True,” Loki smiled.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>It was only eleven when Loki leaned back in his seat and sighed. “I think I need to sit up straight and look at something that’s more than ten inches from my face.”</p><p>“Same,” Thor said. “Let’s watch the greatest hits again.”</p><p>“Ring in the new year with dicks at full mast?”</p><p>“Sounds auspicious, doesn’t it?” Thor grinned. “The Romans had boner-amulets for warding off evil. <em> Fascinum</em>.”</p><p>“Of course they did,” Loki snorted, and his shoulders bounced with his laughter. He drew a deep breath and groaned. “This is what I get for letting you pick what we do.”</p><p>“Yep.” </p><p>“All right, come on. God knows we could use some good luck.” </p><p> </p><p>They brushed their teeth and changed into pajamas, then stretched out on the couch. Loki cast the video to Thor’s TV so they could enjoy it on a large, distant screen.</p><p>“If someone made porn this good, I would pay,” Thor sighed. “So much.”</p><p>“Right? Somebody must have done the math and concluded there was no money in it. It’s definitely not being done.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki had seen the edit so many times he knew every frame. He watched his brother instead. Thor’s lips were faintly smiling, shining in the light from the TV. His features were soft and tired, but still cheerful and sweet. The rise and fall of his breast was deep, but not as slow as Loki knew it to be in sleep. Gradually, the soft fleece of Thor’s sweatpants shifted and stretched until there was a peak at his hips that bobbed from time to time when a scene was especially sexy. Then it bounced up and down without pause, like a metronome, and Loki wrinkled his nose.</p><p>“My eye is up here,” Thor teased.</p><p>Loki met his brother’s gaze before he meant to, then froze, caught, with his lips parted around words that wouldn’t come. He blinked and then startled when it sent hot tears spilling down his cheeks.</p><p>“Hold still,” Thor said. He reached and brushed his thumb across Loki’s left cheek while he kissed the right, bursting the teardrop with his lips. “Happy New Year,” Thor winked, and pecked a kiss onto Loki’s mouth.</p><p>“Happy New Year,” Loki whispered. He took a shaky breath and waited for his insides to stop doing somersaults. “How the hell did you just wink with one eye?”</p><p>Thor laughed. “Skills.”</p><p>“Ah.”</p><p>“Ready for some good luck?”</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>“Go lie down and I’ll give you a back rub.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki bolted back to Thor’s bedroom and threw off his shirt. Thor came in and took a seat on his brother’s butt, then started loosening the knots that had sprouted all through Loki’s neck and shoulders while he was hunched over his journal.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>When Loki woke, the sun was up and his brother was still sleeping. Thor looked comfortable. No furrows in his brow and no frown. His hair had gone wild across the pillow to make a stormy blond sea. The sunlight and white bedding set his skin aglow. The picture of health. The bruising around his right eye seemed like the week-old aftermath of a fist fight. Nothing serious. Nearly healed. The implant made it easy to forget the eye was missing. </p><p>Loki held his breath and inched closer. </p><p>Thor hummed and raised his arm, inviting his brother to tuck himself under it. Loki stole a whiff of the pleasant musk that belonged to his brother and the fading perfumes that belonged to soap and deodorant.</p><p>“How’s your head?” Loki whispered, as he rested his own on Thor’s shoulder and slung his left leg over Thor’s thighs.</p><p>“Good. Didn’t take any Tylenol last night and I didn’t have any trouble.”</p><p>Loki squeezed Thor’s waist and nodded. </p><p> </p><p>They ate a lazy breakfast and flipped through the journal pages they’d done the night before, pleased to find they still looked decent in the unforgiving daylight. </p><p> </p><p>Thor took a shower that lasted at least three times as long as the lengthiest shower Loki had ever taken. When the rush of water finally stopped, the house went so silent it seemed to be holding its breath. A loud call of “Lo?” almost sent Loki out of his skin.</p><p>“Coming.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki found his brother leaning across the bathroom counter, looking into the mirror with his nose nearly pressed to the glass. </p><p>At first glance, Loki thought the blue had gone out of his brother’s right eye. </p><p>“It opened,” Loki breathed, and moved closer to see. </p><p>Thor turned and ducked his head to give Loki a better view. “I wonder if the shower did it.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Loki laughed. “I’m amazed you didn’t steam the paint right off the walls.”</p><p>Now that the lids could move, it was apparent that the shape of Thor’s right eye had nearly resumed its former state. The skin around the stitches still looked slightly too tight, but Loki wasn't sure a stranger would notice anything amiss. The orbital implant was covered with smooth pink tissue, like the inside of a mouth. It gave the impression that Thor possessed a very bloodshot eye with no iris. Loki was close enough to see the clear plastic conformer that sat over the soft flesh, with its round holes for drainage, but from a distance, it was invisible. </p><p>“Does it look okay?” Thor whispered. </p><p>“It looks fantastic,” Loki beamed. Thor’s whole posture seemed to blossom, softening and broadening. It felt to Loki like his brother might fill the room. “The surgeon did an incredible job. I almost wish I hadn’t been so shitty to him… but the bastard <em> was </em> going to send you home without the good drugs, so, still, fuck him. But, god, Thor, it’s amazing.”</p><p>“Should we show Mom?”</p><p>“Can I send her a picture?”</p><p>Thor nodded and Loki took a dozen photos, then sent the best ones to their mother, who responded with fireworks within fifteen seconds.</p><p>“Would you be willing to put my drops in?” Thor asked. “I don’t have any depth perception and I don’t want to waste them.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p> </p><p>Loki was certain Thor could have managed the eye drops on his own. He also vastly preferred to do it himself. Thor perched on the lid of the toilet and tipped his head back while Loki carefully squeezed the bottle.</p><p>“All set,” Loki nodded.</p><p>“Thanks,” Thor grinned, and kissed him on the cheek. </p><p>Thor tugged his towel off to finish drying himself. Loki went out and fetched his journal, then sat on the edge of Thor’s bed, writing up the events of the morning while they were still fresh in his mind. He felt the mattress bounce beneath him and bare limbs stretched out beside him, their color as rich as cinnamon roses against the white sheets. The sun lent them the same petal-shimmer.</p><p>“You’re going to get cold,” Loki said. His voice was thick and he had to sniffle at the end to keep his nose from dripping onto his notebook.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Thor whispered. He reached to curl his fingers lightly against the small of Loki’s back.</p><p>Loki shook his head and opened his mouth, then shut it again. Thor tugged and nudged him until they were lying nose to nose, but Loki still wouldn’t meet his gaze.</p><p>“Any shoots lined up this year?” Thor asked. </p><p>“Not until February. Valentine’s Day wedding.”  </p><p>Thor hummed and nodded. “Plans for personal projects in the meantime?”</p><p>“Vague notions.” </p><p>“Would you be available to help me run errands?”</p><p>“Of course,” Loki said. </p><p>His tone was so nakedly fervent it sent color to Thor’s cheeks. Loki was looking him in the eye now, with an expression as wide open as the moon’s.</p><p>“And would you feel comfortable helping me learn how to drive again?”</p><p>“Anything you need,” Loki insisted, nodding fast. “Just say the word.”</p><p>"Thank you,” Thor breathed, and hid his grin by dipping his head to kiss his brother’s knuckles.</p><p>Loki hummed and pursed his lips to rein his smile into something sane, but it broke free and spread out across his features.</p><p>Thor brushed his thumb over the curve of Loki’s cheek, feeling the fullness it had gained with his brother’s grin. When he stroked the cupid’s bow of Loki’s mouth, Loki closed his eyes and held his breath. </p><p>Thor hummed and kissed him. “Did you think I was done with you?” Thor whispered.</p><p>Loki nodded.</p><p>“Fool,” Thor scolded. He gathered Loki up and nuzzled the side of his neck, pressing soft kisses there until the strain bled out of Loki’s body and left him boneless in Thor’s arms. </p><p> </p><p>They stayed that way for an hour, with Loki resting and Thor slowly stroking his back, sometimes playing with his hair or gently kissing him. </p><p>“Oh, honey, hold still,” Loki said, and rolled over to grab a tissue from the nightstand. He dabbed at the fluid that had trickled from Thor’s eye. It was pink on the white paper, and slightly thicker than tears.</p><p>“Any pain?” </p><p>“No.”  Thor didn’t wrinkle his nose, blush, or blanch when Loki sniffed the tissue. “Verdict?” </p><p>“Saltwater,” Loki said. “And the medicine from your eye drops. Come here.”</p><p>Thor leaned forward so that Loki could carefully sniff his eye. “Anything?” Thor asked, when Loki dropped his head to the pillow again. </p><p>“Good,” Loki pronounced.</p><p>“Not too face-y?”</p><p>“Not yet.” Loki gave Thor a lazy smile and a light nudge with his knee. His posture was languid now. Thor had banished the tension from his body with the same graceful determination he brought to all his endeavors.</p><p>Loki straightened the blankets and drew them up. When he tucked them in behind his brother’s neck, he left his hand there to play with Thor’s hair and stroke his nape.</p><p>“No lifting,” Loki said, when Thor began to haul him closer.</p><p>“Fine,” Thor huffed, and lightly tapped Loki’s back instead, driving him forward until they were lying belly to belly with their legs in a tangle. </p><p>“More fascinum,” Thor smiled, and brushed his nose against his brother’s. “We’re going to have all the luck.”</p><p>Loki wanted to point out that Thor’s hand was down the back of his pajamas, petting his butt, while Thor himself was naked, warm, impossibly handsome, and pressed against his front, but he thought it might sound like a complaint, so he held his tongue. In two months, when Thor was well, Loki would have his brother sobbing his name at the ceiling and moaning it into the sheets. They’d finally give in and go through the door, leaving decades of anticipation in their wake. The loss would inspire them to endless invention, seeking new things to want--and finding them, no doubt. Thor would be there. The four-leaf clover made flesh. They’d be sure to succeed. Loki felt dizzy just thinking about it and clung tighter to his brother, who hummed and mouthed the place behind his ear. It sent Loki’s senses tumbling and drew a sound from low in his throat, oddly high and breathy for having come from such a deep place.</p><p>The meaning of such a sound could hardly come as a shock under the circumstances, but, having been involuntary, it stunned Loki. </p><p>Thor held him close and soothed him with slow strokes along his spine and light kisses to his shoulder.</p><p>When Thor leaned back to look at him, Loki found his own expression on his brother’s face. Warm shining eyes above a loose guileless grin, with an undercurrent of something soft, safe, and drowsy linking all the features.</p><p>They teased at kisses, brushing the edges of their lips together before darting away like fish to hide beneath jaws and nuzzle into the curves of long necks. It sent their hips forward and pulled more small, helpless sounds from their throats. It felt like slipping into a native tongue that had long been forbidden. Each tiny gasp and whimper threw them. It left them clinging to each other and calming each other in turn.</p><p> </p><p>Loki was lightly panting when he looked at Thor’s neck and frowned.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Thor whispered. </p><p>Loki set his fingers to the pulse at the side of Thor’s throat and bit his lip. “It’s probably fine, but…”</p><p>“Do I need to settle down?” Thor smiled.</p><p>Loki pursed his lips and lowered his eyes. </p><p>Thor darted in to kiss the tip of Loki's nose. “Spoon me to sleep?”</p><p>Loki nodded and they slotted together. He pressed lingering kisses to the back of his brother’s head and brushed his thumb back and forth across Thor’s solar plexus.</p><p>Thor took Loki’s hand and kissed his palm, then laced their fingers together. He wiggled his hips, nudging Loki’s cock with the cheeks of his ass until it nestled neatly in between them. </p><p>Loki could feel his brother’s pulse everywhere they were pressed together, the beats low and even, a polygraph picture of innocence.</p><p>“I don’t know why this is the answer,” Loki whispered, and buried his face in Thor’s hair.</p><p>“It always was.” </p><p>“Took us long enough.”</p><p>“I used to think it would cause more problems than it solved,” Thor admitted. “But now…” </p><p>“Perspective is a hell of a drug,” Loki huffed.</p><p>Thor nodded and pumped Loki’s hand. “Hela’s plan couldn’t have backfired more.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>